


Genetic Drift

by notenuffcaffeine



Series: Adaptations [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Teen Wolf (TV), The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: ATA Gene, Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Full Shift Werewolves, Gen, Genii (Stargate), M/M, SGA: canon pet name, Sentient Atlantis, Sentinel Senses, Sentinel/Guide, Team Feels, Team Fluff, Team as Family, Teambuilding, Vacations gone wrong, a little bit stiles whumpy, did I mention this is an AU?, general sentinel senses whumpy, genii shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 110,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25676596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notenuffcaffeine/pseuds/notenuffcaffeine
Summary: Introducing the new team to Atlantis hits a few bumps in the road.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Jim Ellison & Blair Sandburg, Jim Ellison/Elizabeth Weir, Rodney McKay/John Sheppard, Ronon Dex/Teyla Emmagan
Series: Adaptations [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1768660
Comments: 191
Kudos: 253





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I told ya'll it's still going! :) But this is being posted as a WiP so you have been warned. There is no posting schedule on this one like there was on the others. I'm hoping posting will get me finishing this one faster, so feedback welcome! Hell, feed the muses if you want to, ideas welcome! I have plenty of schemes to see to for the next few fics in this set, but it's always fun to work in other ideas. :)

**Pegasus Galaxy: Atlantis - November, 2012**

Three weeks of travel on a battlecruiser in space covered a lot more distance than a ship on the ocean. Stiles spent hours trying to wrap his head around the concept of how far he was from home and it never really seemed to sink in. The best he could do was track the days. The battlecruiser Daedalus took nineteen days to get from Earth to Lantea on that trip, with some weird slow down at the start of the trip that had required Rodney McKay and Colonel Sam Carter to help fix it. 

So it would take nineteen days to get home. Someday. Eventually. 

Home hurt a lot, though, and Stiles wasn't sure he wanted to deal with it. Maybe ever. The annoying werewolf drama of hunters and other bad guys seemed really insignificant compared to standing on a ship, in space, with artificial gravity and breathable air, and people who worked together to keep everything running and every person fed, and, _oh by the way_ , alive was the mandatory priority. At home, werewolves bitched at each other about who was stronger, and hunters just wanted to hurt people and get away with it. 

Stiles spent two and a half weeks on a goddamned spaceship, in another galaxy, and he could sleep at night without worrying he was going to get locked up in a basement or drugged.

He learned about science stuff he had to know and would never learn in school, like what breathable air readings looked like on human computer read-outs and on _alien_ gizmos - alien gizmos that only he and a few other people could make work. Stiles had a basic understanding of what stargates did, _kinda_ how wormholes worked, and how to _not_ kill himself around them by walking into them at the wrong time. He was learning how to read Ancient Lantean, which was apparently also a life-saving skill. 

All this because he was ultimately bound for Atlantis, where the city was massive, and still sixty-percent unknown and kept secrets from most everyone that lived there. They could open the doors and turn on the lights, but that didn't mean they knew what every room or console or gadget was designed for. Rodney had told Stiles that some rooms had clearly labeled Ancient text on the walls, but when they opened the doors, they found empty space rather than, say, whatever a _grafting hall_ was supposed to contain. (Apparently the Atlantis expedition used it as a supply storage quarantine area.)

Stiles spent weeks surrounded by technology that wasn't supposed to even exist. But it did. And he was training to learn how to use some of it. In between meal times and pots and pans duty and learning how to fight with sticks and his hands and any other thing he could find.

It was a new kind of weird. At one point, Derek walked up while Stiles was distracted, his attention focused on trying to use his amped up senses to see out into space through a thick, heavily shielded window, without getting motion sick, and Stiles hadn’t been listening or otherwise watching for any approach in the empty room. Once Stiles felt another person's approach, he reacted without realizing it, blocking the hand that had been moving to touch his arm. Self-defense was sinking in, and he had used it to surprise his Guide. 

Derek was too stunned to be mad then, and over the next few days it had become a sort of game. Werewolves could sneak up on Sentinel. Training with Ronon Dex had made them faster and somehow quieter than he already was. He and Daniel did it to Stiles and Sheppard all the time now that they knew they could. The only downside was that there had been a few zone outs and Derek hadn’t caught them as quick as he said he would have if he hadn't gotten used to trying to sneak up on Stiles. 

In less than three weeks, Stiles Stilinski's entire reality was unrecognizable. 

Even when they traded a battlecruiser for a Puddlejumper, a small ship equally as awesome and scientifically advanced beyond anything normal humans could think up, it was surreal. They zoomed thirty feet over the ground, watching people in strange clothes move around outside of domed huts. People waved at the ship flying overhead, but they were otherwise otherworldly by the most basic definitions, nothing at all familiar to Stiles. He had never seen anything like it at home to even compare it to.

Then they cut out low over empty ocean water and a few minutes later the spires of Atlantis stuck out and up from the horizon line.

Nothing looked like Atlantis. They were on a planet with gravity because Stiles had seen the readings on the Jumper's HUD, he had seen the people and things on the ground that were very clearly stuck to the planet as they moved around. But Atlantis seemed to defy it with towers and bridges and arches over open spaces of the snow-flake shaped platform that everything was built from.

A city nearly the size of San Francisco with a daytime skyline five times more impressive. Stiles couldn't wait to see it at night, surrounded by the stars he had spent weeks traveling through to get there.

And now he got to watch everything light up at his approach, moving through the central spire of the city. With so many stairs to climb down and hallways to wind through as the city responded to the "genetic throwbacks" of its creators activating the sensors that notified the city's central nervous system that it was time to wake up. The city didn't need a blood test to confirm the Lantean lineage like they had needed back at the Sentinel Project. The city itself was the test. 

It was one helluva power rush.

A few times, Stiles chased off in some direction on his own, not quite believing that the city was responding to him. He told Derek and the others to keep going and he would catch up on his own in a minute. Just to return to the main hall to watch Ronon Dex leading two werewolves through a dark and muggy hallway, with no cheerful wall sconces greeting their approach. Ronon figured out the game the second time Stiles did it to them, and when he tried it a third time, he came back to find them waiting where he had left them. So Stiles took off again in search of more lights and doors he could open just by thinking the word. 

For the first hour, Stiles kept accidentally tagging into the communicators with his questions to Atlantis, and then, since he had him on the radio anyway, asking Lt. Colonel Sheppard if he could turn the lights off, or if he could find doors that didn't work for everybody else or - and the answer was usually _yes_. He was wandering a city-sized puzzle, and Stiles had a full twenty-seven hours in a single day to explore it.

Atlantis lit up literally under Stiles' feet. The steps showed off their patterned artwork, some of them had Ancient text written in with their blocky font, warning caution or a _safe passage_ or a _good day_ at any random point. The lights in the corridors turned on at a soft white glow to highlight the patina on the metal walls, brass or bronze or steel that had started aging over in soft greens and teals in places. The floors felt like stone under his feet but they couldn't be. It was a city, there were many levels, stone would be insane. 

Stiles ran to stay ahead of the others, leading the way blindly around corners just to watch the lights turn on ahead of him in welcome.

"Holy shit," he breathed as he ducked his head around a corner and found a massive room with a back wall of artful stained glass that glowed warmly from the sunshine behind it. There was no air conditioning in the city apparently, so the room with the windows was probably fifteen degrees hotter than the hallways, but it looked awesome. 

"Do you even know what you're doing?" Derek asked him, amused, as Stiles dodged back out into the hall in front of them to go find more places to see.

Up the hall about twenty feet, another door opened, with no one anywhere near it. Stiles pointed. "I did that. I know enough."

"Fine, ask the city to turn the AC on," said Daniel, sounding disgruntled under his own contentment with the city he had never seen before. Stiles stopped and stared at the men walking toward him.

"Wait, I can do that?" Stiles asked.

"Yes. In theory. It's how it works on the Jumpers," replied Daniel. Stiles considered it before triggering the radio.

"Colonel? Can I turn on the AC in here?" Stiles asked. There was a beat and then a slight crackle buzz, inside his head, and it was all the more eerie because he could hear it translate as a _beep_ in the radios of the men in the hall with him. 

"Yup," came Sheppard's voice. _Also_ inside his head. Very weird. Forever weird. But Stiles was used to the communicators after three weeks. Mostly.

"No! Do not touch the- what the _hell_ , Colonel-" added Rodney’s voice quickly. "Stiles, no, do not ask Atlantis to mess with the air quality controls. Zelenka will adjust life support systems when we get enough of the city back online... Zelenka? What's the status so far?"

Another crackle and the voice changed over, the heavily accented voice of Radek Zalenka coming through shortly thereafter. "Gateroom and main tower at ninety percent, infirmary fully online. Central control tower at ninety-"

"Give it five minutes, we were just there," interrupted Rodney. "We're making our way to environmental support now. Then the East Pier."

Stiles hesitated. "So that's a hard _no_?"

"You already did, didn't you?" Sheppard asked. Stiles floundered, wanting to lie and really not sure if he could or not without breaking the city.

"Well, I mean, I thought about it, and normally if I think about the door opening, it opens already-"

"Just stop thinking, Stiles. Just walk. No thinking. Shouldn't be hard, right? Hale! Take him somewhere and make him stop thinking," said Rodney’s voice again. It ended on a sharp " _Ow_!" as Sheppard probably hit him for it.

"That was _not_ an order," Sheppard cut in quickly, with Rodney still complaining in the background, his mic shut off. "It'll be fine. McKay'll check the system when we get up to the control room."

"He doesn't know either of those things for a fact," said Rodney. "So don't think. Either of you. Everybody clear on that? Ellison?"

Another crackle and then Jim Ellison chimed in. "Yessir."

"Got it," said Blair Sandburg. "No letting the Sentinel _think_. We're gonna have to chat later, Rodney."

Stiles grinned at that, smug, because Blair was going to politely chat about Rodney doing something _wrong_ , and so far he and Sheppard were the only ones Stiles had seen get away with that without a shouting match. After having been told to _stop thinking_ , it was a minor vindication. 

And Stiles didn't stop thinking, but he stopped paying attention to things that might have something to do with environmental support systems and tried to stick to doors and lights. That was the task assigned in the gateroom, so he would try to stick to that. 

Ronon led the way off the main corridor they had been following to another area and up a set of stairs. It took them to a door and Stiles politely asked it open, just to watch the panels _swoosh_ aside and let them out onto an outdoor patio of sorts. There were banisters and guard rails to keep them away from the edge, and planter boxes with flora in them that looked a little dried out. Ten days with the city in shut-down mode apparently killed the watering systems, too.

"I'm not sure we'll have much food left after this," said Ronon, flicking at a wide leafed plant that looked wilted and yellowed. He kept walking, though, and stopped at a door across the length of the patio, looking back at Stiles when it didn't open for him. Something clicked then for Stiles.

"Ohmygod. I'm a _key_ ," said Stiles, not sure if he was offended or not. 

"And a lightswitch," offered Daniel, nodding. "McKay used to call Sheppard that, Major Lightswitch. Back when we were trying to get the expedition off the ground. I don’t think he was trying to piss him off, either. He's just _really_ not good with names."

Ronon smiled broadly at the story. "Did it piss him off?"

"Not as much as I figured it would," Daniel replied. "Colonel Sheppard wasn't offered much of a role with the expedition originally as anything _other than_ a key for the science team. Before they got out here, he spent about a year on loan to us, just making the Ancient tech work when the rest of us couldn't. That was why he went with the expedition at all. If the original military commander hadn't been killed, Sheppard probably never would have been allowed out of the lab."

Stiles gawked at another hallway lighting up for him. He looked over at Daniel. "Really? At all?"

"No, no. I meant figuratively," said Daniel easily. "I just don't think Sumner would have let him get much past the lightswitch thing. Sheppard had a record at the time, and Colonel Sumner fought to exclude him from the expedition. Director Weir and McKay had to go over his head to keep him once we got the green light to go."

"That's not so bad then," said Derek. "Start out a lightswitch, end up running the place."

"Elizabeth runs things," said Ronon, correcting the record before it could get settled out wrong. "Sheppard handles the military."

Either way, Stiles decided, being a key or a light switch or whatever he was on Atlantis apparently wasn't that bad. He had Colonel Sheppard's old job. And an entire city to learn it in. 

~*~*~

The city was like nothing Blair had ever seen before. In any of his studies, across any culture, there had been nothing quite like the design of Atlantis. Sure, there were borrowed flavors in the designs, some traces of the patterns were slightly familiar, some art-deco cross between ancient Gaelic and Greek lines, maybe? Sandburg kept touching the walls to remind himself it wasn't archaic plaster. It alternated from ornate to functional, depending on where Major Lorne led them. Different hallways connected to new buildings, some of them meant going outside along outer pathways, with doors in between staying shut until Jim approached. 

"I just can’t believe it," Evan Lorne commented, shaking his head as he watched Jim wave his hand over the three-crystal door pad and the door slid open. Blair looked over at him. 

"What?" he asked as they walked out onto a connecting patio.

"This. I'm a carrier. I've got the gene. The Jumpers haven't given me any trouble at all, this whole time. But the doors, man. I haven't been able to open doors in over a week," said Lorne. He waved to Jim. "And Ellison's just walking on through like nothing happened."

"And he just got here," said Blair, smiling happily at the taunt. "It's definitely a good first impression, anyway. The city likes us. Even if everyone else is a little sore."

"Nah, not sore," replied Lorne. He shrugged and shook his head to dismiss it. "Just... amazed, really. I've been here six months, so I'm still green, sure. But you kinda take opening doors for granted, you know? Especially out here."

"This is a city," said Jim, nodding agreement. "The idea that we might get locked in here is a little daunting."

Blair clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, _we_ might. Maybe not you."

Jim scrunched his nose and glanced at Blair. "I dunno about that, Chief. If a computer can decide it likes my blood, it can just as easily decide it doesn't. It's just a bunch of ones and zeroes."

"What a way to think positive, Jim," said Blair, curbing a sigh. The man was entirely too grounded sometimes. And he was probably too amped up, looking for trouble. Blair kept his hand on his friend's shoulder and stepped alongside as they followed after Major Lorne. He saw the tension and signs of stress on Jim's face, his pupils wide to take in the dim light as they moved through lighting up the corridors 

"Dial it back, buddy," Blair cautioned under his breath, and Jim huffed at him for it. Blair squeezed his arm. "I mean it. Look, the ATA thing lets you talk to the city the same as the Daedalus, right. So just turn stuff on before we get to it. Think it on, like Rodney told you not to do. We don't have to walk in the dark."

"It won't offend anyone if you ignore McKay's ranting," Lorne offered. "I think he expects it, at this point."

"He _is_ a Lt. Colonel. Should probably reconsider that theory," said Captain Ellison, the ever-helpful, walking and talking military robot. Lorne nodded quickly.

"Yessir," he reported. Blair liked the kid and he pinched Jim for the well-practiced shut down. Major Lorne dropped easily back into playing tour-guide for them, leading the way as Jim thought the lamps on instead of waiting for the city's sensors to pick up his presence. 

The air conditioning did eventually get to working and the hot muggy ocean air inside the city-ship cooled as the humidity cut in half. Gradually Ellison backed off the paranoia of the new place and got a little less crabby. He and Lorne were joking by the time they hit the North Pier, and the afternoon had mostly faded away.

The city was huge, they had walked the equivalent of miles, not just blocks, between the distance and the stairs involved. They hadn't climbed up into any towers, just skirted along the base of the buildings, going in enough for the sensors to register Ellison and Lorne, and then heading out another door. Blair struggled to keep up and stopped frequently to lean on the walls he had started out admiring. He was obviously going to have to rethink his aversion to jogging if the city tours were going to become any kind of normal.

They walked out to the pier only to decide to go back inside the ship by way of going down a level and exploring more, now that the city's new Sentinel had decided he liked it there. The halls were freezing once they got below the water level, though, and Blair was really disliking their choices. At least the cold made for a good incentive to keep up with Ellison and Lorne, no matter how tired he was.

They made it back to the central tower and the gateroom just as the sun was setting outside the stained glass windows. Blair was absolutely starving, too. The best they could do for the moment was MREs, unless he wanted to ask Caldwell for the favor of staying on the Daedalus another night. Blair wasn't quite that desperate for a hot meal. He settled for some trail mix in a tin foil pack and finished off the water he had been nursing all day as he sat on the lit up stairs in front of the stargate.

Sandburg, Ellison, and Lorne had made it back before the others, which wasn't exactly a surprise given the radio traffic they had all heard all afternoon. Lorne disappeared up to the control room to report to Director Weir, and Ellison scouted around the area, mostly quietly taunting Blair for being eleven years younger and so badly out of shape. Blair silently aimed a middle finger his friend’s way as he finished off his snack-dinner.

He wasn't fully expecting it when Director Weir trotted down the stairs to step into his view, a smile on her face as she looked between Blair and Jim. "Gentlemen," she greeted. 

"Director," replied Jim. The Sentinel moved over to join them, even casually offering a hand to pull Blair up to his feet. Because Jim subscribed to Manners that said no sitting down when greeting a lady who was standing, no matter how many miles he had walked in the last six hours. Blair pasted on a smile and tried to ignore how very truly terribly abused he felt.

"Director," he greeted with his usual cheer. "Your city is amazing. Just the architecture alone... never seen anything like any of it."

Elizabeth Weir smiled warmly and nodded. "It is somewhat amazing. The experience of this place is certainly unique. I wanted to thank you for upending your lives to help us. As you can see, the city needs Colonel Sheppard here. In more ways than we realized when he left."

"We're glad to help," said Jim, and Blair thought his friend actually meant it, too.

"Honestly," Sandburg added, bobbing his head quickly. "Who could turn down another galaxy and space travel. I met an actual _alien_ on the way out here! Like, that is not something I expected to be able to say in my lifetime. And this city is massive... but it's just another _spaceship_..."

"I think the tally is at three _actual_ aliens so far, Chief. Tau’ri or not, you're in another galaxy now, and _we're_ the aliens," replied Jim. 

"Very true," said Director Weir. "And thankfully we have met more friendly Tau’ri than not in Pegasus."

Ellison nodded, standing relaxed as they chatted. "Sheppard had us review some of the reports on the way out. The Wraith and the Genii seemed to be the only real outliers. Is that accurate?"

Director Weir nodded, reassessing the pair of them. "I would say so. I am surprised, you came out here even knowing about the Wraith?"

"I'm still military, Director. He is. We go where we're assigned," said Jim.

"Aliens notwithstanding," said Blair. He tried to smile, but the Wraith made him nervous, no matter what front Ellison offered. Elizabeth gave him a knowing, sympathetic look. She nodded and clasped her hands in front of herself.

"Well, Captain Sandburg, in light of your background, I thought you might appreciate spending your first night on Lantea on the continent, with the Athosians. Teyla’s people," said Weir. "I doubt Colonel Sheppard will be leaving tonight, but I wanted to extend the invitation to you both. You are welcome to fly back with Major Lorne and Teyla and I tonight while the others get the city running again."

And that, of course, was exactly how to revive Sandburg, body and soul, and ruin Ellison's day entirely. Blair didn't even hesitate on the offer.

~*~*~

"Look, I just want a place to sleep-" Sheppard complained at Rodney. "You have the entire city at your fingertips, just pick something with two bedrooms and we can make it happen. It's not like we have to sign a mortgage for it."

Rodney frowned at the screen in front of them. "But look how far away the family units are. I don't want a _commute_."

"Two bedrooms. Joined units. That's it," repeated John. How was this hard for the _genius_ to process? "And if we get it done tonight, we don't have to ask anybody's permission."

"This _week_ ," Rodney corrected him. "Due to the food problem, everyone's staying on the mainland another few days."

John stared at him. "Elizabeth didn't tell me that."

"Err, well, medical leave-" Rodney’s voice trailed off as John glared. He looked to the tablet in Rodney's hand then and snatched it over rather than argue about having a say in city operations with the one guy who would probably agree with him on it. Instead John grabbed a building roster off the map and checked. Then he tapped it and pulled up the layout before handing it back to Rodney. 

"Look. That one. Sign it out to you and it's set," John said instead. 

"But that's ten minutes walk from anything useful," said Rodney.

"You can have my skateboard. Cuts the time in half," John replied. Rodney laughed at that.

"You assume I know how to skateboard. What exactly gave you that impression? My superior physical coordination skills?"

"Fine, I can teach you. Since I'm _still_ on medical leave, there's time," said John.

" _I'm_ not on medical leave-"

John shrugged it off. "I can _fix_ _that-_ "

Rodney glared at him for the helpful threat. "And we need to get the city back and then the important minutia of the refrigeration units and the kitchen online-"

"That will take you and Zelenka absolutely no time at all. And ten minutes walk is not that bad," John reasoned.

"My room is currently three minutes from my lab and four from the control room and two from the mess," said Rodney. He handed the tablet back to John. "There's your criteria. Find something better."

"I might hate you a little bit," John reported, taking the tablet.

"Yes, I know, that's why we need to upgrade to a two bedroom, rather than just keep the rooms we have now," said Rodney, his tone calling _bullshit_ as he rolled his eyes. 

"Look, you can keep it if you want, but we're not staying near the Marines with this stuff. No way. I do not want to _smell_ anyone else's room from my own," replied Sheppard, fully intent to be stubborn.

"Forgive me for asking," came Zelenka's voice from the console behind them. John had forgotten the scientist was there and cringed slightly. "But why are you determined to move in with Rodney, Colonel? I honestly thought you smarter than that."

Rodney narrowed his eyes at his friend briefly before turning and walking to another console. "Har har."

That left Sheppard leaned against one of the Ancient terminals on his own, with a tablet in his hand, feeling like an idiot. "Guide thing," he said lamely. "Goes with the tattoo and the military rank and all that."

"Military rank?" Zelenka echoed. He had gone from idle curiosity to confused and paying attention and looked to Rodney. "You are not military."

"Am now," replied Rodney. He waved dismissively toward John. "A whole lieutenant colonel for the trouble of enlisting. And keeping this idiot alive."

"Hey! That's more or less a mutual benefit," cut in Sheppard. Zelenka only seemed more confused.

"I don't want to know, do I?" he asked. John shook his head as Rodney shrugged.

"Probably not," was the reply. Zelenka nodded and looked between them again.

"Just tell me it's not contagious, this thing that requires cohabitation with McKay," he said.

"No, you don't have the ATA. Therefore you have zero chance of ProX activation and will not suffer the trials of becoming a Sentinel," said Rodney. John glanced over at his Guide, hearing the arrogant SOB get just a little smug about an affliction that wasn't his own. "Ergo, no Sentinel, no Guide. And this one is taken so even then you would have to find your own."

"How about we not make a big deal about this?" John said, waving the volume in general down. The city was empty aside from the three of them, Carson probably still in the infirmary swearing at dead vials of science experiments, and Daniel, Derek, and Stiles off god-knew-where, though they weren't supposed to leave the tower. _Everything_ seemed to echo more. 

"Number one way to make a big deal out of something is to ask it not become one," Rodney replied.

"It's not a thing though," said Sheppard. "We gotta assign rooms for Ellison and Stilinski, too. Sentinel get family units because Sentinel go where the Guides go. I'm just suggesting we get _on_ that. Before we have to worry about everything else."

"You’re the one that told me to have the city fully functional before I sleep," Rodney reminded him. 

"And it's _functional_. Elizabeth didn’t want everyone back yet. So... We'll get the other three wings tomorrow in the daylight-"

"I sent Stiles out to wake the west wing up," said Rodney. "So two, tomorrow."

John stared at him, jaw slack. "Is nobody gonna tell me anything at all now?"

"Not until Carson clears you, apparently," said Rodney. "So find the rooms and assign them. That's what you get to do now. We have everything else well under way."

"Now I'm pissed off, so I'm taking the one I want," Sheppard warned, dead serious as he looked back to the tablet in his hands. Rodney hesitated before he walked back over. He held out his hand to take the tablet back and John tugged it closer, protective, as he glared at him. Rodney huffed a sigh and took it from his hands.

"Give that one to Ellison. It has the better scope of the city, it'll work better for him and his tribal thing," Rodney said. And John snooped as Rodney assigned it on the roster, then moved the tablet to another of the residential buildings, closer to the central tower. "And I want you and Stiles closer to the core. Now that we know the city really is scanning you and your _magic_ high-ATA, I want you both where she can find you."

John's attention skipped up to Rodney's face then. He was still pissed off about being willfully left out of command decisions, but he was surprised at the thought _Rodney_ was putting into the calls he was making. It probably shouldn't have been a surprise, because Rodney was Rodney. But it was unexpected, _because_ Rodney was Rodney. And Rodney was factoring in Sentinel traits and habits alongside Atlantis _preferences_ in the simple choice of an apartment. He was doing that thing he did where he gave a damn without admitting to it.

"Stiles, check in," Sheppard ordered into the comm. It didn't buzz from Rodney or Zelenka's radio earwigs because John didn't want it to. His communicator was synced up with the rest of the Ancient tech and had a direct link to the other two Sentinel that could bypass the regular radio frequency Rodney had hacked into it. Rodney glanced up at him, suspicious of the call, but preoccupied with the apartment assignment task.

"All good here, Colonel," Stiles' voice sounded as clear as if the kid was standing at John's shoulder.

"Great. Then head back," said John. "Time to call it a day."

There was no argument from Stiles at that. Rodney, however, had opinions about it.

"There is no way he finished," the scientist complained. 

"It's mostly all residential out that way anyway," John reminded him. "We hit the important stuff. You've got enough to work with until you pass out. So I'll take the kids and Daniel out to their new place, and I'll scope out whatever place you got for us. And then I'm out of everybody's way until medical is happy with it."

Rodney floundered. "What- This city is _huge_! What happens if you zone out?"

"I haven't zoned in three weeks, Rodney. Don't jinx it when I'm a week away from cleared," said John. "And if I do, that's what the others are there for."

Rodney wasn’t settled by it but he handed the tablet back, the three room assignments added and flagged. "Fine. Knock yourself out."

John smiled sarcastically at him and stood up. "Nice to be home, right, doc?"

"Yes, actually," replied Rodney. He blinked, confused by something, and squinted at John for a moment. John was content to ignore it, but Rodney wasn’t and caught his arm. "On further consideration, don't knock yourself out."

"Uh huh," agreed Sheppard, lips tugging up in a smirk despite himself. He wanted to be angry for a while yet, damn it. Rodney stepped in and the hand at John's arm slid to his stomach to grab the front of his shirt as Rodney dragged him in to a kiss, right there in the control room. John hadn't quite seen that one coming and panicked a little, knowing Zelenka was three feet behind them and likely staring. The team was one thing, SGC and the Project could think whatever they wanted from another galaxy, but surprising the people they worked with seemed like a bad command decision. They were in the control room, damn it... but after dealing with a cranky Rodney for the last few hours, the not-growly attention felt good. Rodney smelled like work and Atlantis and heat and home. It wasn’t like they were making out on the pier again, but John still caught at Rodney’s jacket and took the kiss deeper to pull the man into his senses.

There was still another heartbeat in the room, a third person breathing air, and Zelenka was only a few feet away behind one of the terminals. The man coughed politely and Rodney startled, even biting John's lip for it. 

"Shit." The complaint escaped without permission and John had to back off a step. It was time for him to make a hasty exit before the genius forgot where they were again. Yeah, he was blaming that one on Rodney. 

"Right. Leaving. Go now," Rodney said, the hand at John's side shoving instead of pulling. John and the tablet headed for the door with a nod, a wave, and a "So see ya later..."

He was on the stairs before Zelenka said anything to Rodney, probably not realizing he could still be heard. "Well. If _that_ works, maybe you will be less intolerable to the rest of the city."

" _That_ works fine, and I assure you, my overall disposition hasn't noticeably changed for it," replied Rodney. And he certainly wasn't wrong.

John ducked around under the stairs to head for their stuff where they had left it in the Jumper bay. He started moving bags to the gateroom, expecting that between Stiles, Derek, and Daniel, they would be able to get themselves back there without a tour guide. Tracking them down without using Atlantis' sensors would make for a very long day if they got themselves lost. He counted it as luck that they hadn't. While he was thinking about it, he radioed Rodney and Carson to remind them to get trackers set up for the new guys, and Carson helpfully reminded John that he was still on medical leave.

"Oh, hey, our stuff," came Stiles' voice as John dropped off the last of the bags. He picked up the tablet and handed it over to Derek, the screen showing the location and basic details of their new two bedroom apartment. 

"That setup look good to you?" he asked. The kid looked it over, eyes wide for a heartbeat before the mask was back in place. He shrugged. 

"Sure."

The general vibe from Hale was happy at the news, so John nodded. He took the tablet back and set it on the stairs before grabbing his pack and two of Rodney’s and leading the way out. Stiles was very clearly worn out, after putting in nearly ten miles of walking over as many hours, and the kid's brain and senses had to be running a number on him interacting with Atlantis. It was more intense than anything from the Daedalus, even with the communicators that helped clear out the noise. Daniel Jackson was used to treks with his team, and Derek Hale was a werewolf, so they didn't look too bad. But the two Sentinel were starting to look run down. 

A few more sets of stairs and they got to the empty residence tower Rodney had appointed as theirs. For all Stiles dragged his feet on the way there, he found the speed to be the first one to open a door as they came to one, though he wasn't the fastest draw when it came to getting the lights on. 

They passed a few doors that were likely already spoken for, no matter how empty the city was at the time, and John stopped at the sign of the Ancient markings he recognized from the tablet. He dumped his stuff by the door but didn't open it. 

"This one's mine," he said, pointing to the oxidized marker along the trim over the door. "You guys are a few floors up."

There were the expected complaints about the extra stairs, because Atlantis didn't exactly have elevators, and everyone had been walking all day, but John ignored it. He dodged it easily, blaming Rodney for it. But they didn't complain when Stiles opened the doors to their own space. Well, almost their own space. They had to forfeit the second bedroom to Daniel for a while. Stiles was already scouting the two rooms and seemed to have decided on the one he wanted because he disappeared, Derek following after. Daniel hung back in the front room with John.

"This one's just them, or..." Daniel waved toward the room the pair had passed on.

"We figure for now, until everybody's a little more settled, you can stick with Hale. If the whole _other planet_ thing is going to have an impact on werewolves and lunar cycles, he's going to know it before anybody else," Sheppard said. Daniel nodded and dropped one of his bags off his shoulder as he went to claim the spare room. 

"Blankets and stuff will have to wait until tomorrow... I gotta get into the system to find where they're stashed, and I'm still locked out," John reported, loud enough to be heard even though everyone had scattered. There were probably a few other details the guys would be needing help with before he left, but he was admittedly curious if Stiles would pick it up without help.

The two bedroom units had a sort of entry room right there in front of the door, good enough for a couch and TV if they had them available, and Sheppard poked at the bench that had been left along the wall. His nose burned in warning before he sneezed at the dust everywhere. The expected " _Uh... Sheppard?_ " call from the other rooms followed shortly thereafter. 

"Yeah?" he called back.

"Uh..." said Daniel, frowning as he came to the doorway of his room. He pointed awkwardly back into the room. "Uh. This is going to sound stupid, but-"

"How do the bathrooms work?" Stiles asked, voice loud in the small space even though it came from another room. John nodded.

"Yep, figured."

~*~*~


	2. Chapter 2

After weeks spent sharing a single room with four other people, it took a solid twenty minutes for Stiles to realize he had his own bedroom and that he would be sharing it with Derek. 

"Technically, according to Project protocols, _I_ have my own room, and I am sharing with _you_ ," Derek pointed out, because Stiles didn’t need any new perception of power to go to his ego. "It's in my name. Guide thing."

For one thing, the guy was clever, strong in more ways than Stiles seemed to realize, and had a really wobbly moral compass. It was a bad combination that Derek was way too familiar with, and he would rather play the arrogant alpha jerk than watch Stiles turn into one.

For another, what passed for a couch in the small apartment was skinny and long like Stiles, so Derek wanted it established early that the broad-set werewolf was not the one who would be sleeping on it, _ever_. Derek had no problems being a jerk in the name of his own self-interest.

Retaliation had been a few swift punches at his ribs, not enough to hurt, but enough to distract, as Stiles shoved him to their room and shut the door behind him.

"We still have a roommate," Derek pointed out. Stiles shrugged and tugged his shirt over his head.

"Don't care. I can ask Atlantis for sound proofing," he said, like he was completely serious. Derek started to laugh, because he couldn't have _really_ asked the _city_ for something like that, but a moment later he felt the change in the air. It was a faint auditory shift in the room, in the sound of his own laugh, and even their breathing. Like static or white noise, like the sound of the ocean from outside on the piers, without the rolling pattern. And it was all around them.

"Woah," said Stiles, going still. "I didn't think that would work."

Derek swore under his breath and felt the weird audio frequency roll on his skin. He studied Stiles, concerned.

"You can handle this?" he asked. Stiles nodded.

"I'm fine," he said. Derek didn’t believe it and shook his head.

"Take off the communicator then," said Derek, absolutely not believing that Stiles could possibly be fine with the level of sensory input he had apparently asked Atlantis to create. Derek couldn't handle it, and he was mildly worried about Daniel in the room across the front room from theirs. Stiles accepted the challenge and pulled the headset off from its secure spot over his ear. He even handed it over to Derek, one more insistence that Derek was messing with him. But for once, Derek wasn't messing with Stiles. 

"See, I'm fine," he said, stubborn. Derek arched an eyebrow at him and waited. 

"Then the dials are way off. Check in," he said. Stiles blinked at him.

"What does _that_ even mean?" he asked, mildly mocking him for it. A moment later, though, Stiles was cringing, his stance tugging inward like he had to protect his chest. He rubbed at his arms and then gave up and held his hands over his ears. "Okay... no, that doesn't work."

"Uh huh. Fix it. Before Daniel goes crazy from it or something," said Derek. Stiles shoved at him and moved to sit on the bed platform. 

"Don't tell me what to do," returned Stiles, crabby from the pitch of the white noise already. He was concentrating though, distracted by something. The white noise faded off and Stiles visibly relaxed. But he ignored Derek’s quiet _thank you_ , still focused on something that had him staring at the floor.

"This is weird, dude." Stiles' voice was pitched loud, like he was trying to talk over something. 

"What?"

"I can hear the city without the filter. Everything all at once. Like, Daniel just figured out the shower. And... and Sheppard cranked the AC. And I can kind of hear this thing that keeps repeating among a bunch of other stuff. _Lantea santis notiycia_."

"Insufficient data?" Derek wasn't great with Lantean yet at all, but it wasn't that far off from Latin. So he could fake it. "Tell Sheppard-" Derek remembered he still had Stiles' radio, so he tapped his own on and paged Sheppard and McKay himself to report what had happened. 

"Well, of course there's Insufficient data right now. Not even half the city is back yet,” came Rodney’s quick reply. “The larger concern is that you’re _hearing_ operations data.”

“Well, it’s more like I hear _everything_ ,” said Stiles, replying to what he could hear from Derek’s headpiece. “That’s just part of it that makes sense.”

“Trust me, it gets worse when there’s people in here,” added Colonel Sheppard. “They all echo like a tin can.”

“Colonel, can you hear anything like he’s hearing?” Rodney asked.

“Even if I could, my Latin’s twenty years out of date. I wouldn’t recognize it from the rest of the noise,” replied Sheppard.

“There shouldn’t be any other voices in the city at the moment, John. Just parrot them at us and maybe we can sort it,” Rodney said. Derek could practically hear the man rolling his eyes.

“Uh, should someone be with him if he’s supposed to turn off the communicator?” Daniel’s voice entered the radio conversation, which was comical considering he was just a room away from them. And he had a valid point.

“It hit Stiles pretty hard when he took the thing off,” Derek pointed out.

"And the nice thing about having a whole city to ourselves is that nothing is exploding currently and everyone knows where I am if I don’t reply," replied Sheppard. "Next person to remind me I'm on medical leave again is getting a six am wake up call to run laps around the city. _And_ I'll be pissed if I gotta wake up before six am on my day off."

"I don't get the day off," Rodney complained, but it was quiet, and Sheppard saw fit to ignore it. He went silent for a few minutes. Stiles started getting antsy and wanted the communicator back so Derek handed it over. 

"Can someone go-" Rodney started to ask but Sheppard talked over him.

"Okay, so _that_ was cool," the Lt. Colonel said. "I don't think it's operations stuff, McKay. You and Zelenka can stand down on this one."

"What? Why?" 

"I'm gonna go talk to Stiles on it. Sheppard out," he announced. Stiles pulled a face and grumbled about it, but it stayed off the radios, and he went after the shirt he had tossed away. A few minutes later, something chimed softly from the front room, and they assumed that was the doorbell. 

"I got it," said Stiles, and he moved out to the other room, the doors sliding open while he was still on the way. Sheppard walked in and looked around the room, curious, like he was looking for visible changes. He had only been gone a half an hour.

"Okay, so, what'd you do?" he asked, attention landing on Stiles.

"Nothing?" Stiles replied, confused. Sheppard waved a hand to move it along.

"You’re not in trouble. You confused her. I wanna know what you did to confuse the system," he clarified.

"What?! How?!" Stiles blurted. Daniel looked on from his doorway, surprised.

"Latin not as rusty as you thought?" The linguist asked. 

Sheppard beamed, proud of himself. "I asked her to switch to English. We've got the translation algorithms on the database, she just reversed them."

"Well, okay, so..." Stiles floundered, very obviously too embarrassed to admit to what had happened, in light of the fact that the city had told-on-him for it. Derek rolled his eyes.

"He asked for soundproofing, and suddenly there was white noise and static. It was too much so he shut it down again," Derek reported. Stiles nodded, trying to shrug off what had earlier made his cheeks flush. John huffed out a sigh but didn't seem surprised. 

"So let's just assume that whatever you _actually_ asked for, _literally_ speaking, the city didn't translate right. Turning it on, then turning it off, whatever you said, errored it out."

"Insufficient data," said Stiles, following the logic.

"Right. _And_ you're the new guy. So she's had two years of translating my stuff, but you're all brand new, and you're out of the box and swinging for the fences here," said John. "So maybe start small? Lights, doors, room temperature, shower... easy on-off stuff. We can work her up to the complicated stuff."

"I didn't think soundproofing was complicated..."

The Colonel shrugged it off. "Variables. Way too many of 'em. What decibel range do you want the area to create. Static, snow, tonal? We have alarms in the city, she's wired for sound, but asking for _white-noise_ or _sound-proofing_ isn't going to translate well, you follow?"

That seemed to make sense and Stiles' face twisted up in annoyance, probably aimed at himself. "This is why Rodney said no thinking."

"Right," said John, nodding. He pointed a finger at the floor under his boots, illustration of the fact that he was in their quarters again. "And why I'm here and why _he's_ not in on this conversation. _I_ want you thinking. Explore this stuff, too. I just don't want you confusing the city, either."

"Oh."

"This stuff messes with your head, and believe me, I know it. But it's _cool_. And it's the whole reason I dragged you out here," Sheppard said. "You've got the brains for it. You and me and Ellison can figure this stuff out, and nobody else can. At least, nobody we've run into so far. And that is how we can help _everybody_. We figure it out. We get the science geeks to the answers they need to tap the tech they can, that we can use. And right now we've got time. So don't push it. Crawl before you walk, walk before you run, if you have to. Got it?"

Stiles stared, jaw slack and silent, but he managed a nod. Derek was struck by the Colonel's tone. He was genuinely happy that Stiles had screwed up the city. There was no lecture. This was the pitch. The recruitment for the city they didn't know. And it was on Stiles to figure out if he could do it, because, to listen to Sheppard, the Colonel already _knew_ he could. 

"Look. Rodney’s going to give you shit for this, I promise you, because he has never had that happen before. Any of it," John added. He shook his head to dismiss the easily predicted outcome of any further Atlantis system-errors. "He's looking at this place as a bunch of command codes on a computer screen. That's his job, it's what he's great at. But _you_ are gonna have this city in your head. So just _use_ your head as you sort this out. Start small. Pay attention. 'Cuz she is."

"That's not creepy at all," observed Daniel. Sheppard looked over at him, shrugging it off.

John waved a hand at Daniel and his helpful comment. "If you want to look at it like _Rodney_ then it's _still_ a city, not a toy," John said. "Write the queries right and the city will save lives. Write them wrong, the opposite happens. Either way, think up the right questions to ask by interacting with what you're hearing first."

"So the city doesn't think he's some kind of _god_ after all," Derek said. Yes, he was feeling smug about that. Sheppard nodded and shrugged.

"From what I learned tonight? More like a programmer who speaks a different language," he replied. "The helpful idiot she hopefully likes well enough to keep around."

"Like a pet?" Daniel asked. Sheppard scrunched his brow and looked over at Daniel in open confusion.

"I wouldn't go that far..." he replied. "And I'll remind you, this entire expedition is your fault, so you are the last one who should be doubting _any_ of what I've said."

Daniel nodded his agreement but wasn’t put off from playing Devil's Advocate. "I can't hear what you hear. To a rational outsider... you sound crazy."

"You, however, are neither, so knock it off," replied John. Daniel rolled his eyes and allowed the order to stand. 

"He's not though," said Stiles, sounding a little shocky. He was putting pieces together, a high contrast to Sheppard who apparently already had a more complete picture. "I mean, not crazy. I can hear it when this thing is off." He tapped at the communicator cradled over his ear and then, after a moment, took it off. 

"Careful," muttered Sheppard, wincing in sympathy. Stiles reached over and caught Derek by the arm, looking around at different parts of the room as he processed whatever feedback he was getting from the city. 

"Just for the record, I still don't hear anything," Derek said. Sheppard looked to Daniel for confirmation from the other highly sensitive non-Sentinel in the room, and the man just shook his head. Sheppard took the comm off himself then, flinching the same way Stiles had as he adjusted.

"Seriously? Don't- Just- _No_ zone outs," Daniel complained, but he kept quiet. Sheppard crossed his arms and ignored him, apparently trying to tune into the city the same way Stiles was. 

"Stiles?" Derek asked after a minute. Stiles hadn’t moved at all in ages, and he had gone into a deep breathing mode, like he was trying to meditate. Deep breathing was better than the shallow rasps of a zone, Derek was already all too familiar with Stiles and zoning, but he wanted to check in and be certain. 

"I'm good," Stiles said, though he still sounded distracted. He looked up at Sheppard. "You've been able to... _talk_ with the _city_ this whole time?" 

Sheppard shook his head quickly. "Nope. Just ask for things and they happen. Like turning on any other device. _This_ is new. I love _this_. Rodney is going to hate it, but I love it."

Stiles was still getting used to it but he nodded. "How come it doesn't work with the communicators on?"

"Filters, I guess? Right now we get whatever frequency the city runs on, open channel. Maybe the comms sort that out for us. Won't know until we're here longer. Use it more." The Colonel tucked the device in question back up to his ear. He was looking worn down, even compared to when he had just walked through the door minutes earlier.

"Maybe you should head back to McKay," Derek suggested, trusting his gut on a Guide-call like Blair had told him to. Stiles still had a vice grip on Derek’s arm, so he was still fighting _something_ as he explored. "Whatever it is you two are doing, it's wearing you out."

Sheppard winced and seemed to agree. "Headache. It's fine."

"That's nice," said Derek, crossing his arms and drawing himself up to stand taller. "I'm still going to call McKay if you don't."

The Colonel frowned at him for it, motioned with a hand vaguely around near his head. "This a Guide thing?"

Derek nodded. Sheppard sighed and waved him off. "Fine. But watch it, with this. Ask for quiet if you have to. It might work."

And that was all the fight Sheppard had to put up about being ordered off to find his Guide. That in and of itself said a lot and Derek tapped the radio himself to page Rodney for it. 

"Tattle tale," Sheppard complained over the line.

"That's literally his job, we pay him for this," Rodney came back, sounding snappish. "I'll be there in... five minutes. Zelenka! When are we getting the elevators back online?"

“We don’t have elevators, Rodney. How long have you been gone?” Zelenka’s voice was faint but easily picked up. And then there was quiet from the radios, so apparently Rodney had been not-yelling at Zelenka in the same room. Derek caught Stiles' hand over his arm and pulled him toward the bedroom.

"You need sleep."

Stiles had a scowl on his face at that but he didn't seem inclined to argue for once. "That is _not_ what I _want_."

"Too bad."

~*~*~

It probably would have been faster with more than two eggheads working on the city, but Jim had personally heard McKay refuse the suggestion they send more scientists back over. Something about Zelenka being the only competent one of the lot and McKay being tired of the idiots from the Daedalus. Elizabeth Weir seemed to know McKay well enough to accept the compliment on Zelenka’s behalf and then order the rest of them to the Jumpers. So they were camping, at least for the night, depending on how long it took McKay and the other scientist to sort out the city. 

They had left Doc Beckett and the others back on Atlantis to get things set up. Beckett preferred to inventory the infirmary himself for the medicines and other samples that had been left without working refrigeration for two weeks. The food supplies had already been salvaged from Atlantis when they evacuated, running from the city shutting them out, and it was determined there was no rush sending everyone back without the food again until the city was ready for it. 

The notion that they could be in another galaxy and still get out to go camping was unexpected and yet very welcomed by Jim Ellison. He found himself sitting on a tree stump that had been cut down and left as a bench of sorts near a fire pit, alongside Blair and Ronon. He heard the rest of the expedition in their camp back from the Athosians’ city, just for space rather than any specific divisions. The marines assigned to the group had set up outside the walls of the city-camp, and they made a fair amount of noise themselves, with everyone looking forward to returning to beds and four walls. 

As the friendly Athosian people started to fade off to their homes to sleep, and the social butterflies happily telling Blair all about their family histories started yawning in between stories, Jim started feeling the day. 

Atlantis, the city itself, was not quiet. There was a constant buzz, from the sound of the metal structure and the wind and ocean waves, to the echoes of footsteps and voices, to something that didn’t feel natural at all. It crawled on his skin and reverberated weirdly in his brain, a sound that he could read like words. It was very faint but very annoying.

Jim had spent all day within a single step of Blair, reverting to old habits to ease some of the sensory confusion. He had tried taking off the communicator once to get around it but that seemed to make it more pronounced. It was mostly tiring because it was out of place, something new. Ellison wasn’t a fan, but Blair and Lorne couldn’t hear what he could. He would circle up with Sheppard and Stilinski on it later, when things weren’t so new and busy. 

The mainland had energy but none of the same noise. It was a relief to be out in nature, with the only sounds being people and bugs, night birds and the lap of the ocean water. That was normal. Jim knew what to expect from the crack of a fire. But as people turned in, he realized he wasn't as certain of where they would be staying.

"We didn't bring sleeping bags, Chief," he pointed out quietly, bumping Blair's leg with his own to be sure he had his partner's attention. Blair blinked and sat up a little straighter.

"Oh..."

"What was that?" Elizabeth asked, not far away across the fire. The woman was a doctor herself and the Director of the expedition and apparently tuned in to her charges.

"No sleeping bags," Blair repeated helpfully. "We might need to borrow a couple of blankets, if possible."

"Of course, you are our guests," said one of the locals, a tall man named Halling. He looked from Jim to Elizabeth and back. "We will send some back for the Guardians in the city as well."

"Oh, no, really-" began Jim, not wanting to be seen as some kind of beggar. "He just meant to borrow. Just while we're here."

"But you and the others left everything to help the city of the Ancients," said Halling. "Atlantis provides protection for our people as well and it is only right that we welcome you and them well for your efforts."

"We aren't here for charity, is what Jim is worried about," said Blair. "We just don't want to give the wrong impression..."

Jim looked to Teyla, like he needed a translation, and the woman smiled brightly at him. She nodded. "I may have mentioned something of your situation, but it is not charity. It is thanks. Given freely, I assure you."

"That is great, man. Thank you!" Blair set a hand to Jim's arm in a subtle hint to back off and smiled brightly over at Halling. Somehow Sandburg still looked like a twenty-something college grad when he pulled out that look; Jim only ever saw it when the man was relaxed and happy and at home. It had definitely been a while since Jim had seen it. He echoed his thanks and accepted the hospitality. 

"So I take it the city wore you out on the first day?" Elizabeth asked lightly, amused but also sounding apologetic. Jim shook his head.

"It's definitely different," he said.

"If you hadn't invited us out here, Rodney would have had us on another circuit out to the piers," Blair said. "I was a little worried we would end up lost without Lorne. We weren't exactly retracing our steps when we went through the last time. I want to spend a few days with some maps before we take it on alone. The place is a maze."

Making a face, Ellison nodded as he took a drink from his water bottle. He had been glad to dodge that particular assignment request, too. Trying to get back to the central tower without a map would have been a bitch on his senses as much as the city wore on them.

"Not a bad idea. There are a lot of areas we don't know much about yet, and from what Rodney’s said about you, your genes could get you in trouble,” Elizabeth Weir replied, looking to Jim. Jim choked on the water, momentarily misunderstanding the woman’s words. He wasn’t used to thinking of ATA and ProX as anything other than Blair’s mumbo jumbo academic stuff and didn’t want to know how his jeans could get him in trouble in an empty city, so it took him a minute to catch on.

“How do you mean?” he managed, his dignity somehow still intact. Elizabeth arched an eyebrow at him but didn’t press. She shrugged a shoulder and inclined her head off toward the water.

“There are entire sections of the city that we don’t know exactly what they were designed for. Empty rooms, empty auditoriums, no furniture to speak of. Their functions are probably in the database somewhere, but the database is massive. We have a team working on the translations, of course, but not everything has to do with the city itself. And the organization of it is really a disaster, that’s not just Rodney’s ego making the assessment. So when you add in this unknown of the ProX, who knows what you could walk into or if you personally could even walk out of it.”

That was a different outlook entirely than the one Sheppard and McKay had presented on the cruise from the Milky Way, and Jim glanced at Blair. The pair of them had a much different sense of caution and self-preservation overall than the rest of their team. They probably should have expected that McKay’s expectations for the Sentinel in the city would have been a little... broadly focused. Blair leaned an elbow on his knee and put his face in his hand.

“You know, don’t you, that he would have sent Stilinski out-” Jim began quietly. Sandburg nodded.

“He would have sent John with him, right?” he asked. Jim gave him a flat look.

“McKay has had him on a short leash for a month, he wouldn’t have sent him out with the kid,” Jim replied. Blair pounded his head into his hand.

“Derek would have gone along,” Teyla assured them. “And Daniel. And the werewolves don’t have the ATA gene at all. They should be enough to keep him out of harm's way from anything the ProX uncovers.”

“I’m sorry, _excuse_ me?” said Director Weir, in what was very definitely a Director’s tone of voice. “Werewolves- Where did you learn about werewolves, Teyla? What are you talking about?”

Jim straightened quickly and looked from face to face around their fire. Halling was the only Athosian left near them, and he didn’t seem overly alarmed at Teyla’s casual mention of mythical creatures. But Elizabeth... was another story.

“Uh, Chief, you wanna take this one?” Jim asked. Blair had his face in both of his hands now, afraid to look up.

“Nope. Not really.”

“Well I’m thinking somebody needs to,” said Elizabeth, leaning forward to be able to more efficiently glare at the members of her command. Her elbows rested on her knees and her hands clasped in front of her, authority returning to her smoothly despite the casual environs of a campfire. “And pretty damn fast before I go wake up Lorne and this social visit comes to an abrupt end.”

Beside her, Teyla narrowed her eyes at the three men across the fire pit from them. “Elizabeth was not briefed on who we brought back?”

Blair winced. “Jack wanted it classified so it didn’t get back to the SGC.”

“Explain. Someone,” said Elizabeth. Jim liked her tone about it. The woman had some goddamn sense. And from what he had already seen from the other senior members of her staff, she was probably run ragged herding a bunch of suicidal cats on a daily basis. 

“Let’s say, hypothetically speaking,” Jim began, looking to help her out. “In the interests of following the General’s orders for the moment, of course. Just for the sake of discussion, right?”

“Sure,” said Elizabeth, arching an eyebrow and sitting up, crossing her arms. Beside Jim, Blair let out a sigh that translated roughly to “ _Sheppard is going to murder us_.” And Jim had to ignore it in the interests of Elizabeth Weir not being the one doing the murdering.

“Back on Earth, through genetic evolution that apparently has very little if anything to do with this magic ATA that we’re all so familiar with, say there’s people who can... physically turn into other animals. Shapeshifters. Werewolves. Whatever you want to call them. One minute they’re a bipedal human, a few seconds later, they’re covered in fur and have large teeth and four paws. Entertain the notion that these are real,” said Jim.

Of all people, Halling nodded open acceptance of this hypothetical. “We have these legends among our people as well.”

Blair’s eyebrows shot up and he looked to Teyla. She stared back at him evenly, challenging him to ask his question or accept Halling’s words. Blair leaned back a little to retreat from the woman’s glare. Teyla went on the potential murderer list for Jim, but he at least figured she would go after Sheppard before him or Sandburg.

“I am entertaining this notion then, for the sake of this discussion,” Elizabeth said, reclaiming Jim’s attention. He hesitated, then tried to sort it out carefully.

“Well, these genetic evolutionary... guys... maybe they can spread their evolutionary advancement like mosquito spread Ebola, and, for the sake of argument, a normal, non-ATA Tau’ri could be, say, bitten and become a werewolf. A fully adult Tau’ri would need to learn how to handle this transformation, right? They would need a... well, a guide to make sure they could safely evolve. So nobody would get hurt. And they’d know how to avoid the whole biting thing, control and all that. And the best sort of guide to learn these things from would be someone who was born with... that skill set.”

Elizabeth’s eyes had gotten very wide and her jaw dropped open as she listened. “Are you shi- They did _not_. In my city-”

“Let’s say, hypothetically, that the one who was bitten while on a mission was a member of the SGC. And, for the sake of argument, we already happened to have a Guide on our team who could also train that specific _other_ skill set,” Jim continued, because he was pretty sure there would be yelling soon. Teyla put her hand on Elizabeth’s arm.

“I was under the impression you had been told in advance. I am sorry,” she said. She turned a hard look on the men who had been aboard the Daedalus with her. “And I’ll be having a word with the Colonels about this. Ronon and I should have been included in the General’s plans, and Dr. Weir should have been warned.”

Jim cast a glance over at Ronon, relieved to see he at least wasn’t as agitated about the classification shift as Teyla was, but he knew well enough, too, that Ronon would stand by Teyla on the matter. “I think that’s fair,” Jim said, finding himself acting peacekeeper as Blair maintained radio silence.

“I’m sure Colonel Sheppard would have told me eventually, Teyla,” Elizabeth said. She still seemed unhappy but Teyla’s interceding on her behalf - and on her own - had given Weir enough time to collect her wits. She nodded, decided on that, at least. The warning scale had dropped down from _murder_ to merely potential _battery_ and Jim pat himself on the back for it. He hadn’t personally handled the deescalation, but he hadn’t blown anything up yet, either. And Blair wasn’t being much help.

“It’s not exactly been possible to get any messages through on unofficial channels until we got here,” Jim added helpfully. Elizabeth’s sharp gaze cut over to Jim again.

“We were, however, on the city together for the entire day and no one thought to mention it,” she pointed out, “So no, the Colonels - neither one - get a free pass for this. And Carson knows?”

“Carson’s been helping try to figure out what makes these hypotheticals their hypothetical selves,” Blair finally said. “He knows. He’s been given the rundown on the care and maintenance required. Which, hey, at least that’s a perk. There are two perpetually healthy individuals who will never need visit the infirmary for his services. Their systems will heal them up from just about anything. That’s... just a fun-fact.”

Elizabeth took a steeling sort of deep breath as she sat up straight and forced her arms back down to her sides. “Well. That’s good to know. And do we have any _fun facts_ about how we expect to prevent accidental harm or bitings to the rest of my people who are all stuck on a floating city in the middle of the ocean?”

“That would be Derek’s arena,” said Blair helpfully. “They’ve been working at helping Daniel with control. There were absolutely no problems on the way out here.”

“And Sheppard mentioned that if there’s problems, the city brig will be enough for anything Derek can’t keep contained,” Jim added. 

“There _was_ one problem,” Ronon pointed out, quietly correcting the account. Blair nodded quickly and waved at Ronon in a sort of indication of thanks.

“ _One_ problem. Really more of a learning experience than a problem,” Blair replied. ”The werewolves pick up on shifts in the Sentinel teams. Ronon and Teyla did, too, really. That was what clued the rest of us in on it. So if the team hits a distress point, the werewolves notice. We got ahead of the team problem without Daniel stressing out too bad, and now we know what not to do in the future. Problem identified and avoided. Teamwork.” 

Elizabeth stared at them. “You realize that Atlantis exists in a state of perpetual stress, correct? You read the reports on this expedition.”

“Different types of stress entirely,” said Blair. “This one was an interpersonal communication error, ironically. The team worked well under physical pressure scenarios. It was the... I guess, the emotional pressure of the team dynamic shifts that ultimately caused the thing-we-don’t-know. Not to get too academic about it.”

Jim winced because that sounded awful. “Translation for that was, it was a Guide thing, and it mostly was only noticed because we were all living in the same room.”

“Probably, yeah,” said Blair. Elizabeth stared at them intently, much calmer, but no less angry at how the lines of communication had failed. 

“Captains, I’ll be requesting a very thorough briefing on what exactly my team has brought back with them. Sentinel, Guides, and werewolf archaeologists and whatever it is that is in between. Within the week when we get Atlantis back up and running,” she said. “A full background, just to be clear. I don’t want any of these surprises hitting on my ship like they did on the Daedalus without me being made promptly aware of it. And as I understand it, you are currently above Colonel Sheppard on the chain of command, so keeping me in the loop falls to you. Is that understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Blair and Jim easily. 

“Good,” replied Elizabeth. She didn’t exactly relax, but she seemed to breathe a little easier. “Thank you.”

There was quiet around the fire for a long few minutes. Ronon was the first of them to move, and that was to reach out a foot to where Teyla sat on the ground between them and Elizabeth to prod Teyla in the knee. She looked up at him curiously.

“Think we need to warn her about Sheppard and McKay?” he asked. Jim heard Elizabeth’s heart rate spike.

“God,” she complained, bracing for it. “What _else_ did they do?”

Ronon smirked as Teyla smacked at his shin to make him keep his mouth shut. 

~*~*~


	3. Chapter 3

Rodney and Zelenka had the basic systems back up and operational before morning, and the city would sync itself with the remaining two piers as they came back online. A lot of the work would be done by Zelenka alone because Rodney wasn’t letting Sheppard wander the city by himself, and there were two sections that had to be reactivated. So they gave Derek a tablet that could be tracked and showed him how to navigate the maps, and Rodney sent Derek and his team out to get the buildings on the pier that he and Sheppard weren’t covering. Then Rodney took his team - consisting of himself and John - out to the other. 

Once they were on their way, at random points throughout the morning, Rodney continued to quiz him on the conversations John had told him about the night before. Because rational humans couldn’t have actual conversations with a _city_ , but somehow John Sheppard and Stiles Stilinski could. 

“Why can’t everyone hear the city?” Rodney asked at one point.

“I don’t know. Isn’t that more your area?” John replied as he ducked through a door to one of the catwalks between buildings. “That’s a broadcast frequency thing, right?”

Rodney waved it off. “Not that I - Why don’t you just ask the city?”

“Language barrier, buddy. I’m not sure she understands everything right. If I ask something like that, she could flip the console languages on us or something,” said John, shaking his head. “I mean, I’ll get there eventually, but right now, the policy is to stick to yes or no questions and, you know, keep sane because we’re seeing voices in our heads.”

“You mean hearing voices.”

“No, I mean _seeing_ voices. Part of this thing is it’s like Atlantis has her own interface in my head. I hear her as noise, but to make it make sense, I have to read it. And trying to figure that out is exhausting.”

Rodney stopped walking then, too distracted by what he heard and staring agog at Sheppard. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Tell me about it. The only way I got any sleep was you,” said John. He stopped and waited for Rodney. “The city doesn’t know what ‘sleep’ means and it took me a half hour to figure out how to word a request for radio silence. Then I just kind of... focused on you to ignore her.”

Rodney felt his face flush hot and John grinned at him. It reminded him that there was a difference between John’s faces when he was at work or behind closed doors, and technically the Colonel was on medical leave and they stood in the middle of an empty hallway halfway back from the pier. Rodney cleared his throat and started walking again.

“You should tell me when you do that,” he finally said. John nodded.

“I just did.”

“No, _when_ you’re doing it, idiot,” Rodney insisted. 

“What, so we can stop what we’re doing and you can log it?” replied John with a dismissive scoff. “We can black out the stuff with the city, I guess. Just shove McMasters’ face in the rest.”

“No.” Rodney scowled at the mocking suggestion. “I was actually planning on never writing another SPR again in my life now that Caldwell’s not going to enforce the check-ins. But the rest, no. Just no.”

“Good with me,” John agreed, his good mood returned. “Maybe if we don’t mention it, Sandburg won’t notice.”

“He won’t outrank you forever,” Rodney replied. “Or us. Whatever.”

“Calm down, Rodney. It was a joke,” said John, shaking his head.

“And I was merely observing fact.”

Sheppard frowned at him for it as they walked. “You could be a little less _mercenary_ with your facts. They’re AR-1. Same as Ronon and Teyla. Be nice.”

Rodney shrugged it off, not really paying attention as he tracked the city’s electricity use on a tablet as John turned more lights on. “I’m always nice. Which is why Ronon and Teyla haven’t killed me yet.”

“Gonna bet that’s _not_ fact, but you keep thinking positive, Mer.” And John bumped up against Rodney’s shoulder to lean in enough to buss a kiss at his jaw.

“We’re working,” Rodney reminded him.

“ _You’re_ working. I’m on leave,” replied John. And then he set off down a side hallway that was nowhere on Rodney’s list of objectives. Rodney grumbled and followed after him, complaining that he was making the task longer than it had to be.

When they returned to the control room, they found Sandburg and Ellison’s bags had been moved from the platform where Sheppard had left them the previous night, which probably meant that the other Sentinel team had returned with Lorne and Elizabeth. John’s steps slowed on the stairs, however, and he lifted his face toward the balcony a little, set a hand to Rodney’s back. John hated smelling things, but it looked like he was trying to track a scent and Rodney kept the dog joke to himself.

“What?” he asked instead.

“Uh. Somebody’s pissed off. It, uh, stands out when there’s nobody in the city, I guess,” Sheppard replied. And he stepped ahead of Rodney when they got to the top of the stairs.

“Lt. Colonel Sheppard,” came Elizabeth’s voice from the next room. Rodney saw her standing behind Zelenka at the console and the Czech was looking unscathed, so Rodney assumed nothing disastrous had happened while they were gone, whatever John was smelling on the air.

“Afternoon, Director,” greeted John, responding easily to the formal title that said John was walking into trouble. The two usually got along well and were, as far as Rodney understood it, friends. But Sheppard had made things difficult for the expedition’s director since they had returned from the failed mission to Datura, almost two months earlier. Rodney approached with caution, noting that Elizabeth hadn’t said anything to him yet, no _Doctor_ or _Colonel_ either one. Just an acknowledging nod before her sharp gaze went back to John.

“My office, please. I’d like a word,” she said to John. The man offered her a smile. 

“Sure thing, doc. I’m still on leave, though,” he replied, the same taunting sarcasm he had been hitting Rodney with on the topic all morning. Elizabeth stood beside the doorway of her office and pointed him inside. Rodney most definitely did not volunteer to join them. He waited until the door slid closed behind them before dropping into a chair at one of the consoles to check on the city’s progress. Zelenka wheeled his chair over and took the tablet from Rodney as an excuse to lower his voice.

“What did you do?” he asked, accusing. Rodney blinked at him.

“I didn’t do anything. I just got here,” he replied. Zelenka nodded.

“So did the Colonel,” he pointed out. “And Doctor Weir has been here twenty minutes and not smiled once.”

That was confusing to Rodney but he shrugged it off. He glanced over at the office, though, just to keep an eye on things and make sure he wasn’t supposed to be getting yelled at, too. The whole shared-rank thing was still confusing and he didn’t know exactly how much he was supposed to be babysitting Sheppard now that they were back on Atlantis and the standards of the Sentinel Project could be ignored. It was one thing to keep him from activating some Ancient tech and zoning out on it, but quite another to be interfering with the city’s operations. John sat forward on the edge of his chair, elbows on his knees, as he dealt directly with Elizabeth, already talking. That probably meant he could handle whatever had put the scowl on the Director’s face. Rodney looked away again before he got caught snooping.

“Where are the others then?” he asked Zelenka instead. The other scientist waved off toward the stairs and scooted his chair back to his own laptop.

“Major Lorne escorted them to their quarters. And Teyla made me track Stilinski on the map to show her where you had sent them. She is also unhappy this morning,” Zelenka reported. He shook his head. “I didn’t want to know, before, but now I think you really must tell me what happened, if people will keep coming to me looking for you.”

Rodney frowned at the laptop in front of him, not actually seeing the numbers being reported. He pulled up the sensors himself and checked the locations of his team, quickly identifying Teyla and Ronon both already returning with Hale’s tracked tablet and presumably the werewolves attached to it.

“Whatever it is, it happened last night,” Rodney pointed out. “I was here.”

“Yes. With the Colonel. And Doctor Weir asked for _Colonel_ McKay, no doctors,” Zelenka replied. Rodney let out a sigh and turned in his chair to deal with the questions before it dragged out to the entire department. Telling Zelenka would at least work in his favor anyway, as the man was a much more conscientious gossip than Carson Beckett. So he kept his voice down as he tried to catch his friend up on the conclusion of the last two months as they related to how Rodney expected the new normal of the city’s command structure to line up. A Sentinel in charge of Atlantis’ military, a Guide in charge of the Science department, and a very happy Atlantis who could talk to three high-ATA-carrying genetic throwbacks to the Lantean line.

“You sent a _child_ with a _high-ATA_ to explore the city and _activate_ dormant wings when it could put him in the _hospital_?” Zelenka asked, eyes wide. “You did this not once but _twice_!”

 _Oh_. Rodney tilted his head as he realized a potential point of concern that he likely should have considered before that moment.

“Right. Yes. I... I suppose I should have sent someone familiar with Atlantis along on that project,” he said. He still shook his head. “But they had maps. And I sent them the most direct routes, main thoroughfare only.”

There were a few muttered words in a foreign language Rodney was very rusty on but none of these words were friendly. Zelenka shook his head at him. “No, Rodney. You are not allowed to touch the city anymore.”

Rodney shot him a glare but still tapped his radio. “Stiles, you didn’t break anything, right?”

“Nope,” came the clear reply.

“Thank you,” said Rodney. Then, looking pointedly to Zelenka, he added, “I knew you could do it.”

Zelenka did not appreciate the seventeen year old being given rare accolades for _not breaking things_ and turned his attention to the computer again. In Elizabeth’s office, John had turned in his chair to look back at him, and even Elizabeth was looking very confused. Rodney waved them off. Sheppard could go back to being yelled at. 

“Okay...” said Stiles over the radio. “But I think Teyla’s still mad at you though. She said you shouldn’t use false flattery on people.”

Rodney glared out at the stargate as Zelenka turned in his chair, far too smug when offered vindication out the mouth of babes.

“It wasn’t - I’ll remind everyone this is an open channel and there’s no need to revert to messengers like teenagers,” replied Rodney.

“Like he said, she’s still pissed off, so she’s staying off the open channel,” came Ronon’s voice. “And she says she’s handling your training this week.”

“Okay, _that’s_ enough,” came Sheppard’s voice in Rodney’s ear. He looked back to the office and found John still in his chair. He went quiet on the radio and said a few things with Elizabeth before he stood up and the door slid open again. He looked out at Rodney. “McKay. Get in here.”

Curbing a sigh, Rodney stood up and shut the laptop screen. Zelenka shook his head. “If only I could wish it’s been nice knowing you, Rodney.”

“Zelenka!” Elizabeth sounded absolutely exasperated with all of them. Rodney still shoved his friend’s chair with his hip as he walked by.

~*~*~

John blocked the door to make sure it closed Rodney inside with him. The man wasn't likely to go running away, but it was the principle of the thing after listening to the bickering on the radio. The seventeen year old had probably been the most adult among them, at possibly the worst possible point in his conversation with Elizabeth. And then, when they sat down, Elizabeth’s eyes tracked right to the matching tattoos on their right hands, and her eyebrow climbed up her forehead as she looked up at John again.

"Sentinel Project requirement," he said, lifting his hand. He reached over and tapped Rodney’s, ignoring the man's baffled expression. "And that was Ronon's."

"You let Ronon dictate a team tattoo-"

" _He_ was in a coma. _I_ let Ronon dictate a team tattoo. Well, Teyla and I," said Rodney. 

"This gets back to my point, John," said Elizabeth. Rodney looked between them.

"What point? I just got here."

Sheppard rolled his eyes. "We are impulsive and endangered the crew of the Daedalus and Atlantis by bringing unknown werewolves onto the team. I was just telling her that they-"

Rodney leaned forward, interrupting him to talk over him. "While that may be very true that John is very impulsive, in this situation, I assure you, as someone who does not like or approve of the _existence_ of children, the ATA-carriers more than make up for it. It was a package deal, and the more we're finding out now that they are here, it would have been absolutely impossible to have Stilinski along without Hale."

"Jeezus christ," John muttered, looking quickly over his shoulder to make sure there wasn't a Sentinel anywhere near the control room. He smacked Rodney on the shoulder and shot him a glare. "Don't say stuff like that. Any of it."

"What? It's true."

"It's how you scare the shit out of Stiles, is what it is, and we'll talk about it later," said John, dead sober about it. Rodney nodded, and he looked confused, so maybe he hadn't been trying to be an asshole for once. John frowned and looked back to Elizabeth. 

"Look, I get what it looks like-"

"It's starting to look like you brought in a teenager and everyone on your team forgot how to act their age," said Elizabeth. 

"That's... actually not wrong, and really kind of proves my point," John said, surprised as he realized Weir had accidentally landed on a valid point. She crossed her arms at him and John backpedaled. "There's a lot of stuff that comes with the activated... everything. We don't understand it all yet. Sandburg and Ellison have been at this for years and they still don't understand everything. They have _no_ case studies on anybody with high-ATA like us. And then you toss Atlantis in the middle of it? None of us know what we're doing."

"So amid _that_ scenario you think it's a _good_ idea to introduce _werewolves_?" Elizabeth’s voice was a whisper on the last word. John still winced, but he nodded.

"Yes. And I promise I wasn't being impulsive and ADHD about it," he said. "It's math, Elizabeth. It's probability. We can't tap into Atlantis with this stuff with just me and Ellison. We need the numbers. And Stiles is stronger than me with the ATA thing. Even Ellison is something only like eighty? Me and the kid are ninety-two, and a little more. There's a lot about this city waking up on me since the ProX came online. Stiles found something just last night that Rodney is gonna hate me for forever, but it's a whole new thing..."

"Oh, you need to warn Ellison about that," Rodney interrupted.

"Right. After this," John said, derailed briefly. He looked back to Elizabeth. "I can't just grab a whole team of people from that stupid training program without getting stuck with their rules and their influence and without giving the SGC security nightmares. But this kid doesn't have that training. He's not a pocket-spy for whoever their donors are. I can trust that if Stiles gets into something we need to know about, he or Derek will tell us."

"They'll tell us even if we don't need to know about it," Rodney complained. "You heard him yesterday, on the radio all afternoon."

"He's a kid and this is new," John returned, rolling his eyes at Rodney. "He learns fast, just give him a few days."

Elizabeth was not looking impressed yet, just very stressed. "John-"

"Yeah, so, _that's_ why we need the werewolf," Rodney cut in, valiantly trying to get them back on track. "Where the Guide goes, the Sentinel goes. And Hale has his own skills that he can work with our teams on. Irreplaceable inside of a year. I can guarantee it."

Elizabeth arched an eyebrow at him for that. "That is extremely high praise coming from you. That's twice inside of fifteen minutes, Rodney. Are you feeling alright?"

Rodney fluffed up like he was offended people were tracking his compliments. "I'm fine-"

"We've been working and living with these kids for a month, doc. They're on the team, have been since the start," said John. "Hell, Rodney found them. Rodney was the one who wanted to keep them."

"Well, I never said _keep_ , I think I just said _help-_ "

"I'm just saying, there's stuff going on with this team that we don’t understand, and we won't for months if ever, because there's no rulebook for how it's going to work here," said John. 

Rodney nodded. "Just as an example of what we don't know, somehow or another, John is now allergic to citrus. Because of me."

Sheppard winced, and then nodded when Elizabeth looked to him for confirmation. 

"Weird stuff is happening with all of us, no way around it," he said. "And if it means Teyla starts playing the telephone game when she gets pissed off, because all of us are hanging around with teenagers too much, I don't really care. I know we all get along well enough _to_ be around each other too much, and we work damn well together when things get tight."

"I would, however, like to know _why_ Teyla’s mad at us?" Rodney offered up, pretending it was an afterthought. John shrugged.

"We didn't tell her the General classified Daniel's health records and assignment here," he replied.

"Oh. But you told Doctor Weir, right?"

"No... _Teyla_ did. That's why she's mad. I was _going_ to tell Elizabeth but yesterday got busy," said John. He glanced back at Elizabeth when she sunk her head into her hands over her desk. Things fell silent and John realized he had steamrolled the Director entirely when he started talking about Atlantis again. It was becoming a very bad habit.

"Look, all I'm getting at is that the kids aren't a threat. Daniel isn't because we're watching him. And this werewolf thing is nothing compared to the fact that Atlantis likes us here," said John, very careful with his volume control because he hadn’t paid attention at all before. Elizabeth looked up at him from between her hands, not looking convinced.

"You’re telling me that, first, werewolves _are_ real, and second, that they're not a threat, and third, that you're expecting me to not find these two statements entirely contradictory to each other?" Elizabeth asked, in her _Director-of-Atlantis_ voice.

"Yes," said John and Rodney, amazingly in sync. Elizabeth looked like she wanted to strangle them both.

"What if we asked them to show you?" Rodney suggested. John stiffened in his chair, not a great fan of that idea at all. Rodney noticed. "What? Yes, it's slightly exploitative and certainly invasive, but you and I more or less knew what we were dealing with when we agreed to this. Elizabeth has fairy-tales and urban legends and bad horror movies. Based on that, I wouldn't have approved of it either, no matter how high Stiles' ATA. And it's her city. We may have security codes, but she's the one who reports to the IOA when everything blows up."

John bit his lip and considered it, looking over at Elizabeth. She wasn't quick with an answer to that one, and John thought he caught the acrid scent of fear. He wasn't okay with Weir being afraid of any member of his team. He shook his head and stood up. 

"Stay here, I'll go ask," he decided. Elizabeth put up a polite discouraging protest but she very noticeably didn't order him back.

Zelenka looked up at him as John walked briskly out to the Gateroom but if he was snooping, he at least didn't ask about werewolves. Instead, John got out to the stairs and started down when he saw a black furry wolf head poke around the corner under them. Stiles stood up from the bottom steps and turned, looking up at him. Teyla and Ronon stood nearby, the latter looking like himself but Teyla cross-armed and glaring at him. Daniel came around the corner then, carrying neatly folded clothes and setting them down on Stiles' backpack.

"Everybody okay?" John asked, cautious. Derek pounced up the stairs four at a time without seeming intent on violence in his very toothy-form, and Stiles headed up behind him.

"Yep, we're good. Teyla gave us the heads-up. Kinda been snooping though, too, so..." He waved toward Derek, who now stood on the floor above John and waited patiently.

"Shit like this is how you get KP," Sheppard reminded Stiles soberly.

"Yeah, but you were being loud," Stiles replied, "It wasn't entirely _my_ fault."

"Freebie," John decided. "First and _only_ one."

"Yes sir," Stiles said, grinning smugly and instantly making John question his choices. Instead, the Colonel looked over at Daniel. 

"She's probably going to want to talk to you, too," he said. "But right now it'd still be your call."

Daniel made a face and then reluctantly started up the stairs. John clapped him on the back as he passed and he and Stiles followed him up. John led the way back to Elizabeth’s office, pausing long enough to see Zelenka’s jaw-dropped expression as he stared at the wolf that followed them. 

" _Classified_ ," John told the scientist firmly. 

"Of course, Colonel," replied Zelenka. John held the door open to let Daniel and Stiles through, and then followed after Derek. The wolf trotted easily around the three of them, between the two chairs in front of Elizabeth’s desk, and then around the corner to sit and stare at her, tail wagging harmlessly. Elizabeth stared at the dog and the surprise on her face warred quite plainly with the hand on her desk that kept twitching toward the dog like she needed to pet it.

“This...” Elizabeth turned the hand that had nearly pet Derek’s head like the very good dog he was being to instead point at him. “This is-”

“That’s Derek. He can full-shift. And we’re his pack, so he protects us. He’s no threat to us,” said Stiles.

“Wait, _we_?” asked Rodney, but John shushed him. “I missed a-” 

“Well, I mean, we’re still not werewolves, but we’re his pack,” said Stiles, shrugging and holding a hand up to wobble back and forth. “Since we’re not wolves, he and Daniel are the only ones, with no alpha, so they’re omega and on their own. But he and Daniel are still our team, so it’s _like_ pack.” 

“Omega just means he’s achieved his final form,” Daniel offered up. Stiles looked over at him, confused.

“That’s not-” Stiles trailed off as Daniel shrugged.

“I know the Bestiary _says_ it means that we just don’t have a pack, but I think the Bestiary is wrong. Linguistically, it’s just the final evolution. Alpha is first, or strongest, Beta is a second, and Omega is last, or complete. And I can’t full-shift like he can yet, but I can hit the beta stage. It’s a matter of... willpower, I think,” said Daniel. He had obviously been putting a lot more research into his change in situation than Sheppard had ever done with the Sentinel thing and it made John a little self-conscious. There was still no way he could ace a pop-quiz on anything Sentinel, and there was Daniel already rewriting the werewolf rulebook.

“Derek’s not an alpha anymore though,” said Stiles. “So you’re not a beta.”

“Like I said, I don’t think it has to do with a hierarchy so much as an... evolutionary stage,” said Daniel. “The Alphas we saw were massive, and their behavior would indicate they needed to be drawing from each other, like a proximity thing, maybe. From what Derek has told me about them, they require a werewolf pack to maintain that power. Like a battery, the alpha with the larger pack has more to draw from, so they can shift with more power. They can get _bigger_. Without more werewolves to draw from, I won’t hit the alpha stage. And maybe not even omega if it really is cyclical. But I’m good. I’ve got my hands full figuring out the beta shift.” 

Stiles looked skeptical, but Derek the wolf stood up and wagged his tail before turning to wend around Stiles’ legs to sit at Daniel’s instead. Stiles blinked at him before shrugging and looking back at Elizabeth. “Okay, we go with his theory.” 

“So you’re a full grown adult, and you shift... into a _baby_ werewolf?” Elizabeth asked, looking to the full-sized wolf at Daniel’s feet.

“No, he shifts into a werewolf the same size he is now. He doesn’t get any bigger,” said Stiles. “Unless he finds more werewolves and they form a pack and he becomes an alpha. Like we’re a team, and we can kind of... unconsciously read each other in a lot of ways...”

"I'm sorry, _read-_ are you saying Sentinel have telepathy?" Elizabeth asked, looking to John in alarm.

"No..." John said quickly.

“Something like it, but... not,” said Rodney helpfully. “They pick up on hormone changes and smells and epidermal color patterns that the rest of us don’t see. But it means they can read anybody they know well like a book.”

“Not exactly,” muttered John, self-consciously.

“Right, same with werewolves, sorta. The wolves just... don’t have to have a tattoo to warn people about it,” said Stiles. He lifted his right hand to show the blue tattoo that matched Sheppard and McKay’s. Elizabeth looked between them and then back down to the wolf. Daniel winced and lifted his hand to show that he had managed a partial shift.

“I mean, tattoo or not, we’re not exactly subtle, either,” he said. “If I were to shift, you would definitely see the difference.”

Wide eyed, Elizabeth stared at Daniel’s clawed hand. She waved vaguely toward it. “This is the extent of it?” 

“No ma’am,” said Daniel. “Just... all I’m comfortable with at the moment.”

“Daniel, I... I don’t know what to say. You were there at the start of this expedition. If anybody at the SGC could know what we were up against out here, it would be you,” Elizabeth said finally. “I just... you’re sure this is safe in a contained environment like Atlantis? Where... I mean, for godsakes, we’ve been here two years and don’t know a fraction of what we’re living with. This isn’t the same as an Earth environment. You endangered yourself just getting out here...”

Daniel tucked his hand back in his jacket pocket and nodded. “I understand that. But I needed the training. I still do. And my trainer is needed here.”

“Sheppard and Ronon can take him down,” said Stiles. “Even when he’s shifted. And until we know what the lunar cycles do, we can plan on spending time in the brig. Or on the mainland or whatever it’s called. We planned for it.”

“I’m not sure that makes me feel any better about this situation,” said Elizabeth. It looked like she still wanted to argue but the only real option was to send the werewolves back on the Daedalus and that was a worse idea than bringing them out in the first place had been. And Sheppard didn’t want to point that out, just on the off chance the Director hadn’t considered it yet.

"We're on it, Elizabeth. We may be figuring it out as we go, but... that's kind of what we do here. We got Daniel the best team to get him back on his feet, and we get his brain on the Database here until he's good to go home. And we got him here safe, so we've shown he can do it," said Sheppard. "And now that we're on-site again, no more communication hangups. And I will go apologize to Teyla and let her kick my ass in the gym if it'll make everybody feel better. We already went through this on the way out here. I'm thinking it's a... Guide thing."

"Don't blame us for this," McKay said quietly, as Derek the wolf grumbled at him for the comment, too. Sheppard raised an eyebrow and set his hands in his pockets as the two Guides present proved his point for him. Elizabeth crossed her arms as she looked over the gathered team. The hamster wheel was turning and John saw the challenge catch the Director’s curiosity over the common sense she had been focused on since he had walked in her office. Seconds later, she nodded. 

"Fine. But I want to know the _second_ anything changes that may impact this station," she said, looking at each of them in turn. "Someone being busy is not an acceptable excuse. You let me know if Atlantis has a negative impact on Dr. Jackson or Mr. Hale, either one. We have limited alternatives out here and I don't want them suffering for that any more than I want to risk anyone else in this city."

"Yes ma'am," said John and Daniel, with Stiles as an echo. 

"Thank you," said the Director. She looked to Daniel and Stiles. "That's all I have for you three. Could you please send Ronon in here?"

The others left quickly and Elizabeth nodded to John. "You’re going to want to sit."

John glanced at Rodney before sitting in the chair he had vacated. "That doesn’t sound good."

"I can't in good conscience lecture you on your communication delays when I'm still sitting on one of my own," said Elizabeth. 

"That _really_ doesn't sound good," John muttered, slouching a little in his chair and looking back out the doors. Ronon was on his way and John politely requested the doors let the man in before he had reached them. Moments later the team was assembled in front of her desk, Ronon in his usual place leaned casually against the wall.

"I'm honestly... not sure how to broach this subject at all," Elizabeth began. Ronon shrugged.

"So say it."

"Yes. Well. The problem has to do with the Daturans," Director Weir said. John sat up from his slouch, already not liking the direction the conversation was going when paired with the blend of anger and sadness he was getting hit with. He was going to have to dial it down hard when the city got her people back in and cluttering the spaces up.

"We sent Major Lorne to the planet when your team went missing. He made contact with the city leader and had a much different interaction with the man than your account showed later. And the Proctor assured him he had seen you and you left for the 'gate under escort after favorable terms had been arranged."

"What!" Rodney was suddenly on the edge of his chair.

"He was fully cooperative, allowed Lorne and two teams to conduct a formal search. Allowed Zelenka to pull the most recent addresses from their DHD. We sent cloaked Jumpers to sweep the city and we found no trace of your transmitters," Elizabeth went on.

"Yeah, because we weren't on the damn planet," said Ronon. The anger in the room was stifling over the rage slowly creeping up on John. He leaned forward and set his hand over Rodney’s wrist, trying to get things to balance out so he could narrow in on his own thoughts without the input from the emotional hormone shifts of everyone else in the room.

"As we learned, a week later when you were home again," Elizabeth said. "But due to the cooperation they provided in that first week, we had already come to a tentative arrangement. And the Proctor reached out a week after you left for Earth to request medical supplies and assistance for a flu. Which I only allowed because to back out of the agreement would have consequences I did not want to commit the city to without discussing with you, Colonel."

"Maybe you should have mentioned this before sending me back to Earth," said Sheppard, barely polite.

"You were not so quietly discussing _mutiny_ , John," Elizabeth replied. "I had serious concerns for your health, mental and otherwise, and couldn't bring this up to any of you. Carson and Teyla didn't even know that Lorne had made progress there because I didn't want it to get back to you and make your situation worse."

"You should have scrapped the arrangement with the planet! You put every one of our teams at risk sending them there at all, let alone an unattended medical team," said John. 

"They were accompanied by Major Lorne and the teams he saw fit, and he had an account of acceptable social expectations. Tattoos and improper dress are, as you noted, serious offenses and the Proctor made it a point to request their customs be obliged in advance. And after the fact, we understood why. Before your return, it was no different than any of the other conservative societies we've dealt with."

"That is bullshit, Elizabeth," said John bluntly. 

"Yes, I believe it is, too. That is why I was not going to address the situation with the Daturans again without your input, Colonel," Elizabeth replied. She looked to the others. "All of you have a say in this. And nothing moves on that front until it is agreed on. But it is something on the horizon that we will have to settle sooner rather than later in order to correct the wrongs. We are outsiders here, and how we respond will ultimately spread beyond one planet."

"You already rolled out the red carpet for them, damn it! We're stuck with it now, unless we want to break our word, and that's all we've got out here," returned Sheppard. 

"That doesn't mean we can't respond," said Elizabeth. "Atlantis dealt in good faith and it was abused. They covered an act of war behind false flattery and profited from it while Atlantis suffered for it. And we have a right to demand acknowledgement going forward, and apology. And handled correctly, we raise our position. Mishandled, we start the war they were looking for, apparently because Ronon has tattoos."

"Hart's _hair_ was _too short,_ Elizabeth. And she wore a uniform like Rodney and I. We can't deal with these people." John shook his head. "No."

"Then we have the right to inform them of that," the Director replied. "And, as Atlantis' military commander, if you would prefer to be the one to have that conversation with the Proctor, when the time comes to have the conversation, I will back you."

John stilled. The woman’s face wore a carefully neutral expression, the political mask she pulled out when she had to start splitting hairs with the SGC and the IOA.

"You mean that?" he asked. Elizabeth nodded.

"Yes, Colonel. Atlantis and her people were harmed. Three times over, by my count. First with your team's kidnapping, next with Dr. Hart's murder, and the third strike was their abuse of the city's good will. And, when you are cleared to return to duty, I will default to you on the applicable and appropriate military response. But as you said, the damage has already been done, and we can choose to respond at this point when the decision is most convenient to us."

John looked to Ronon, seeing the angry scowl on his face. His second wanted to open the 'gate and march right away, John could see it as clearly as if he really could read his team's minds. But the Satedan was thinking it over. Just like John was. He looked back to Elizabeth, an unamused smile as he realized what the woman was up to.

"That's why you're telling me now," he observed. "I can't move on this until Sandburg and Beckett clear me."

"I'm telling you _now_ because it's the first time I've seen you clear-headed and behaving like _yourself_ in two months, Colonel," Elizabeth replied. "The fact that any decisions you make require a cooling-off period is coincidence, but given that your own description of your choices lately was 'impulsive,' I can't say that the delay would be a bad thing under the circumstances."

Rodney grunted his annoyance at the Director’s logic, no obvious argument presenting itself to him just then. He had gone slightly pale and unsettled, however, and John was likewise _done_ with the topic for the moment. It was an accidental betrayal on Weir and Lorne's parts, but it still stung. And it was compounded by weeks of silence on the matter. John stood up then, more or less granting himself permission to leave because he was still _on_ leave.

"Fine. But after this, Elizabeth, I don't want to hear any more crap about bringing Derek and Daniel along. Because this... this is a whole other league, doc," he told her. Elizabeth leaned forward over her desk to look up at him.

"You brought me _werewolves_ , John. That is its _own_ league."

She might have had a point about that, but John wasn't in the mood to let her have it. He clapped Rodney on the shoulder and glanced over at Ronon. "We're dismissed."

~*~*~


	4. Chapter 4

Stiles wasn’t all that eager to go camping, so he passed on the invitation to go back to the mainland and explore. Daniel took Dr. Weir up on it, though, and it almost got Derek dragged along. Sheppard and Dr. Weir had a staring match over it when she tried to draft Derek into going and the Colonel seemed to have won the round. The cafeteria was really starting to reek, so Major Lorne, Dr. Weir, and Daniel were supposed to bring back a team to start work on it now that the main tower’s kitchens' power access had been fixed.

Sheppard then took Stiles and Ellison out to open up more of the city. Apparently the city could sometimes imprint on the gene-carriers who they first interacted with, which Rodney hadn’t factored in when he had sent them exploring before. So the new plan was to get into the city building-by-building instead of just following the routes to the pier with all three of them and try to get around whatever happened with the imprinting thing. They were limited by the available power sources for the city, but they had more room to play than the last time they had run into the problem. Rodney wanted to go, but he had to stay in the Control Room and get the city’s safeguards back online with some weird satellite stuff and a sensor array and all those cool words that were straight out of a sci-fi movie and Stiles couldn’t help at all with.

McKay tried to completely kill Sheppard’s plan for confusing the city’s gene-preferences because he couldn’t go along with him, but John talked him down since Blair was going. He wouldn’t have _his_ Guide, but he had two on the team, and Blair and Jim knew how to get him back if he zoned. The plan mostly seemed to be though that Sheppard just wasn’t going to let himself zone out. Because apparently he thought he could willpower his way around it, and Stiles hadn’t figured out how that worked yet. Blair and Jim said it _wasn’t_ how it worked, but John hadn’t zoned out in three weeks so they couldn’t exactly prove him wrong, either.

So the Colonel took them around himself, and the city stopped them in their tracks a few times because of it. Unsupervised by a scientist, they wandered into rooms Sheppard had "always wondered what these were for" and looked around. The Colonel kept taking the headset off whenever Blair would let him get away with it, listening to the city. Mostly Sandburg cautioned against it because Jim had already told him that the city could be exhaustingly loud. And mostly John ignored him.

The first place John tried to go without the headset was right off the gateroom, not far from Rodney, and something made him stop. Stiles was still in the same mindset as the day before, of asking for doors to open and lights to turn on, even though they had already all been through that hallway a few times. So when Sheppard stopped, Stiles looked around, and asked for the door to open even though he didn’t see one. The wall next to him slid open at the seams, like every other door in the ships would do, but without the part where there was a door there. Stiles stopped and stared at the hole in the wall that now revealed a room.

“Uh...” he began. Sheppard showed up and poked his head inside, the room blinking lights on as they probably both asked for them at once.

“Okay... that’s cool...” said the Colonel. Blair shadowed them.

“What? You didn’t know about this one?” he asked Sheppard. The Colonel shook his head.

“I’ve never asked a _wall_ to open up before,” he said. “Maybe I should add it to the list.”

“I didn’t ask the _wall-_ ”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly an _open sesame_ , but you asked and the city replied,” said the Colonel. He held up the comm headset he wasn’t wearing. “I can hear the replies in the noise. If I’m not listening for anything else. It’s kinda... it’s in the static.”

“Okay, _that’s_ creepy,” Blair announced. He caught the Colonel’s hand with the headset in it and very carefully shoved it back at the man. “And no more exploring without the filter doing the work.”

“Rodney’s _right_ there-” Sheppard pointed up the stairs. Stiles smirked at the argument about to commence and poked his head into the new room a little further. Derek explored with him as Ellison hung back to supervise the debate about Sentinel relying on crutches versus Sentinel wisely avoiding overloads that will put them under. There wasn’t much in the room, little alcoves that could be used for storage bays probably. But Stiles’ hand itched, like triggered nerves, if he got around certain parts of the walls that stuck out into the walkway. He tried setting a hand to the metal trim edge of the wall. It was curved, looked decorative, but it buzzed to life under his hand.

“Uh... Colonel Sheppard?” Stiles said, hardly looking back to interrupt the man’s debate with the experts. Derek noticed what Stiles was dealing with and held his hand out, too, to see what he could feel. Stiles looked over at him. “You feel that, right?”

“Mechanical, kinda grating movement?” Derek asked. Stiles nodded, because that was part of it. But it wasn’t all of it. There was something electrical, too, but Stiles wasn’t sure if it was really there or if it was the input from the city messing with him.

When Sheppard showed up, Stiles tried to explain it, and the Colonel caught on before he got out five words. He started trying to follow the wall, finding places that had the electrical buzz and tracing them up and down as much as he could reach. Stiles went to one of the other alcoves, did the same thing, skipping over the parts of the wall that didn’t have the tracks of energy, and following it to an alcove at the end of the room. It seemed to disappear under the floor there and Stiles frowned at the point where he lost it.

Sheppard stepped past him into the alcove to try the back wall and stopped short in the middle of the room, staring at the floor.

“Okay, you have got to stop doing that, man,” Blair complained at him as the Colonel just stood still and quiet, ignoring him. Stiles shook his head.

“He’s not zoned,” he said. Blair waved toward the door where he had come from, and where Jim still waited, eyeing the walls like he still didn’t trust the city.

“I couldn’t tell that from back there,” the Guide said. He walked up and put himself in John’s line of sight, and the Colonel shoved him carefully to the side, pointing at the floor.

“Careful,” he said, his voice pitched loud, like he had his hearing turned down way too far. “Feels like there’s something there.”

Stiles stepped in, wondering what Sheppard had found, and the floor just at the two men’s feet opened up. They stepped back and Stiles stopped where he was as a... Thing... rose up from the floor. About three or four feet tall, it looked metal like everything else in Atlantis, but none of the patina from the oxidation like the halls. It looked like a shiny copper-brass post with a rounded hood and a mouth. Stiles reached out and poked at a raised area over the post’s opening that looked like a screen, and found it was a tablet, resting barely mounted to the edge. The second he touched the box, the wall behind the unit opened up on a screen. Sheppard swatted to chase his hand away, but Stiles already had the tablet and it and the screen on the wall had both lit up. Derek and Blair went to the screen because it had Ancient writing all along one side. The post in front of Stiles made a slight, quiet rumbling sound, and something round rolled to the front edge of the hole. He looked over at Sheppard.

“Did you do that?” he asked.

“Did _I-_ _I’m_ still on _yes-no_ queries, so I’m gonna guess the guy asking for metal cannonballs is gonna be _you_ ,” the Colonel replied, still wide-eyed as he looked between the two parts of the station they had uncovered. Stiles took that as something close to permission and he picked up the metal ball that had shown up in the post. Sheppard swore under his breath as he got a good look at it.

“Hell. I’ve seen one of those before,” he said. He held a hand out and Stiles tried to drop it into his palm, but the ball with the weird grooves and bumps suddenly floated up the moment it was out of his hand. Stiles stepped back as Sheppard frowned up at the ball bobbing just over his eye-line a few feet away.

“The screen says something about diagnostics...” Blair said, sounding rather stunned as he too stared back at the orb.

“What is it?” Derek asked. Sheppard shook his head.

“Hell if I know. The only time I’ve ever seen one of these, it was hanging around a planet with a buncha kids. I thought it was the Wraith snooping on us,” he replied. He nodded toward the tablet that Stiles still held. “What’s that thing doing?”

Stiles looked down to see a blurring image that didn’t make any sense. He blindly pushed a button and the image righted, as the floating orb stopped spinning. And the image on the screen was the top of his head as he looked down at the tablet. _No way_. He pushed at the buttons again and moved the ball around, watching it zoom around and nearly bonk his team in the head as Stiles tried to get the hang of making the thing move. The camera picked up everything. Little numbers showed up on the edges of the screen that showed temperature and humidity and oxygen levels. As the ball sped toward the hallway (and Ellison) Stiles showed the screen to Sheppard.

“I’ll be damned,” the Lt. Colonel muttered as they watched Ellison smoothly step out of the way of the flying camera. Sheppard grinned as the ball kept going, and he waved for Stiles to pass over the tablet. “So this is, what, just the remote, right?” And the man was quickly figuring out how to steer the camera around and move the ball, and a moment later there was a shout from the control room as the ball hovered over the work station with Zelenka and Rodney and their laptops.

“What the hell is that!” squawked Rodney’s voice. Blair stepped forward.

“Wait. _I_ heard that. That thing has speakers!” he said.

“So it’s, what, like a drone?” asked Stiles. Sheppard shook his head.

“Our drones make shit blow up,” he said. He held his hands out in illustration. “About so-big, look like glowy octopus things... useful as shit but _no_. These are not them.”

“Then what is it?” Derek asked.

On the screen, Rodney had taken off his jacket and was swinging it at the orb. Sheppard noticed that he wasn’t the one having to keep the floating ball out of range and frowned at the prank he was playing on his Guide. “Shit, these things _might be_ weaponized,” he said, as he started moving it well out of Rodney’s reach again.

“If it’s got speakers, it’s got a microphone, right?” Blair reasoned. Sheppard and Stiles both started poking at the tablet in search of the options. Stiles found something that looked promising, trusting the design of an instinctive user interface rather than any of the Ancient text on the screen.

“Rodney?” Sheppard asked, experimenting. Rodney stopped trying to throw things at the out-of-reach orb and started looking around for the source of the voice that had said his name. Sheppard flew the ball closer. “Follow the shiny thing, McKay. This way...” and he edged the ball back toward the stairs that went down to the gateroom. Rodney squinted at it, and Sheppard laughed out loud at the screen, but the man followed where he was shown. Right up to the door. Ellison waved him inside, still not about to wander into a room with no door apparently, and Rodney stared around, jaw dropped.

“What the-” Rodney began. “Two years...”

“Right?” replied Sheppard before he had gotten to whatever else was stuck. He snuck the tablet away from Stiles and put it back where they had found it, and the ball let the air out of the jets and sank slowly to the floor a few feet in front of Rodney. The scientist went to pick it up, and walked up to John, shaking it at him.

“What is this thing?” he demanded. Sheppard smiled at him.

“That’s _your_ job,” he said helpfully. “We just find the things. You boys figure them out.”

“But there’s no one here yet,” Rodney pointed out. “And how do we know this thing works for anyone without the ProX if it took the three of you to find this one?”

“Two,” said Ellison from the door. He waved toward the room that didn’t exist for two years prior. “I was _not_ involved in... this. Just them.”

Rodney glared at Sheppard as he just patted him on the shoulder. “You’ll figure it out. We’re going to go find _more_ stuff. Just like it.”

The group took that as a hint and headed for the door, and the only reason McKay didn’t stay where he was in the middle of the floor, glaring at Sheppard, was the concern that he’d be locked inside without one of the Sentinels in it. The doors did close again, but they waited until Rodney was safely out of the room. He stared at the seam in the wall for a moment, then backed up and reapproached, and the doors swept open. The scientist let out a triumphant “ _Ah ha!_ ” for the success, and Sheppard was grinning as he led the rest of the team away from the tower.

After that, Stiles stopped asking for doors to open randomly. It seemed like he could start confusing the request if he made it too often where there was no door to be opened. There was still a weird language barrier with the city. The Colonel had pointed out that the city probably saw them as useful-idiot computer programmers, and Stiles didn’t want to cement himself as the dumb one if he didn’t have to. He was having to struggle with the questions though, finding himself relying on some of the things Teyla and Blair had taught him about meditation in order to even make requests make sense to _himself_... which probably meant he was getting too far away from the _yes_ or _no_ questions that Sheppard wanted him to stick to. It took work, but it was fun.

Eventually, five minutes or so after leaving the gate room, they walked into one room in the center of a building not far from the central tower, with tiered floors and a very high ceiling, and Blair wandered down to the center of the room as the wall sconces lit up. Ornate lines in the floor lit up in geometric weaves with no apparent trail, just an all-over pattern that added to the soft glow of the room.

"How's the acoustics in here?" Blair asked. "Perfect theater or lecture hall, man. It's huge."

There was a rumble suddenly under their feet. Stiles stopped halfway down the tiers from following after Blair, and looked down, seeing the smooth, barely there indents in the ground. He tugged Derek over to a section without the lines and the floors opened up once their shoes had retreated to safer territory. Rows of padded benches and chairs unfolded around the room, rising up around them. The most noise it all made was the simple sound of movement, like flapping paper. No cranking hydraulics or cracking floor plates.

Down on the center stage, Blair had frozen, afraid to move. Derek swore under his breath, eyes wide as he looked around at the difference. Up above them, John was smiling broadly as he pounced down the steps on the now very obvious pathway between benches.

"Sweet," he muttered as he ducked by them. Jim followed, looking stunned. Before they had gotten down to Blair, something overhead started moving, and Stiles looked up to see what looked like a crystal screen unrolling from the ceiling.

"We could fit... damn near everyone in here," John realized as he and Jim walked up to join Blair. The Guide latched on to Jim's arm like Stiles grabbed Derek when he needed to balance his senses.

"I just saw that, right? You see benches and tables and-"

"Yeah, Chief. It's a lecture hall or something," Jim confirmed for him. John tapped Jim's arm and waved them back a few steps as he studied the floor. He held a hand out in front of him like he was testing for hot or cold spots in the air. Then he smiled.

"Watch this," he said. And even as he spoke something lifted up out of the floor the same as the benches had, this one looking like a miniature version of one of the city's buildings. He looked over at Blair and waved him toward it. "There ya go, doc. Lectern and everything."

"How the hell did you know that was there?" Jim asked. John waved him over and then crouched at another area of the stage, toward the back. Stiles jumped down the tiered steps two at a time to go see what the other two Sentinel could see. It was a slight color difference in the smooth stone that showed the shape of the object under it, very faint, but there when he knew to look. And when Stiles held his hand close to the floor, he felt a difference in temperature over the area with what looked like another bench or table of some sort. He looked back up at the Colonel.

"So how'd you get it to show up?" he asked.

"Asked her to show me what was there," said Sheppard. He nodded. "Step back and give it a shot."

Stiles looked to Jim to be sure he didn't want to try it first, and the man shook his head. He didn't seem entirely comfortable with the magic-morphing city responding to him. Stiles jumped at the chance and tried to clear the other noises to make sure he didn't screw it up like the night before. A moment later he was watching a table unfold up from the floor just like the benches and the podium. And there was this happy aftereffect that made him smile at a table, an odd sense of accomplishment, because he had just teamed up with an _entire city._

The next oddity that they uncovered, Sheppard wouldn't let Stiles go near. It was in another building, an hour later, and the room was hardly the size of the control room outside of Dr. Weir's office.

"What is it?" Blair asked, frowning as John worked at the console that he had _thought_ out of the wall. Jim looked down at one across the room that he had uncovered, which was why Sheppard had cracked down on Stiles keeping his brain to himself.

"Not sure, but the only thing I'm getting from her on it is the word _shields_ , and until these guys are ready for the command chair, no messing with shields," replied the Colonel. "I actually need to get Rodney down here for this one."

Stiles stood in the doorway, fingers itching to get in and explore the room. "Colonel-"

"Nope, Stiles. _Stay_ ," came the quick reply.

"Okay fine, but that wall over there, then," said Stiles. He pointed to an area of the circular room not far from where he and Derek stood. "I really want to know what's over there."

Sheppard looked over his shoulder at Stiles and then the area he pointed at. He thought about it before nodding. "Okay. Check it out. But do _not_ activate anything in here. _Finding_ and _observation_ words only."

Stiles went to the wall and tried the floor trick from the auditorium, checking for lines in the floor and different temperature zones. Nothing stood out so he stood up and put his hand on the wall like he did in the room outside the gateroom. There were no obvious discolorations, only decorative frameworks like everywhere else on the city's interior walls. But he felt energy again, and the light temperature difference where his hand rested. And once again a careful thought made a wall disappear, uncovering multiple panels that wrapped around the room, one after the other sliding away to reveal screens that looked like the heads-up displays in the Puddlejumpers. Sheppard stepped back from the console he had been trying to read and translate to stare at the wall behind it instead, where it now had a screen.

"Oh. Well, that's handy," he said. "Gonna say it's a good thing Rodney’s not here. Pretty sure you would have just killed him."

Stiles wanted badly to mess with more panels so he stopped and clasped his hands behind his back, rocking on his heels and trying to be still rather than make people nervous that he was going to tell Atlantis to do something she shouldn't. He watched John leave one console to go to an empty stretch of wall under one of the monitors Stiles had uncovered to bring out another console section and fill in the gap that had been left. He squinted at the screen, tilted his head, and then swore. Suddenly he was messing with buttons and touch screens like he had gone fluent in Ancient Lantean. Jim moved over to see what he was doing, and suddenly Stiles caught a scent on the air in the room. Stress.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Uh. We just found another drone stash. Three of them," said Sheppard.

"That's a good thing," said Ellison at his shoulder. The Colonel nodded.

"Sure. But if we have more arsenal bays we haven't been able to dig up in that screwed up database, what else is under here? The maps in the control room haven't shown us what's in the damn rooms, just that some of them _exist_. And those there-" Sheppard pointed to a section of the map not far from where they stood. "Are supposed to be empty. We're storing goddamned surplus in those rooms there, nothing in that other one that I know of."

Sheppard fished around in his pockets until he found his headset. Blair noticed and backhanded his shoulder.

"What the hell, man. Are you trying to zone?"

"No, just figure out my city," said Sheppard in reply. Blair shook his head.

"You are _obsessed_ ," he observed. John smirked at him.

"New toys. I've been here two years and it's like somebody _finally_ handed me the manual," he said. A moment later he was talking into the radio at Rodney, telling him to pull up maps and schematics and check what showed up at his location and enough other rapid orders that Rodney started grouching at him and enlisting Zelenka’s help keeping up.

"Holy crap," came Rodney’s voice after a few minutes. "Is that a- generator? Shit, Zelenka, what's that signature over there?" There was an awed sort of quiet from McKay. "My god, John. What did you find?"

"Dunno, but I'm betting we can find better. What'd the Ancients call the ZPM?" Sheppard asked.

"Hey, hold up. No digging through the code like that. We'll get Jackson to look it up when he gets back," said Rodney.

"It’s not digging if I know what to ask for. She might tell me the shortcut," replied John.

"Or she might lock you out because you just got here and you start asking for the heavy artillery," pointed out Blair, off the radio. That gave Sheppard a reason to think and he seemed to freeze up.

"Okay, good point," he said.

"Maybe we should cut these trips to one a day so we can avoid an information overload, here," suggested Ellison. Sheppard blinked at him.

"That's a _great_ idea," said John. He pointed everybody back toward the door. "Rodney, I'm heading for the chair."

"What? Why?"

"Remember the Wraith wreck back on the Daedalus?" he said.

"Well, yeah. But Atlantis doesn't need-"

"The chair interface is better than the one in my head. We can speak the same language there. And if nothing else, we can boost the mainframe access to the maps," said Sheppard. He ushered everyone back out into the hall and then pointed them back toward the main hallway. Rodney was making negative noises about John's theories but he said he was on the way.

They went down a few hallways and then stopped at a door that opened just before they got to it. John stepped inside and waved them in after him. "C'mon. Shortcut."

Stiles sped up to be the second in the door, only to come up short as he realized it wasn't the way to another hallway. They were in a small room, just big enough for all five of them.

"Oh. Elevator?" he asked. John nodded as the doors slid closed behind Blair.

"Basically, yeah," he replied. He pointed to and pressed a spot on the map on a wide touchscreen panel at the back of the room. "We're going over there."

It was a basic map of Atlantis, with one dot that seemed to be a " _You Are Here_ " alert and then a few other glowing dots spread throughout. The " _there_ " Sheppard touched on the screen seemed a good distance away.

"How?" Derek asked. John opened his mouth to reply and his distracted, determined expression suddenly disappeared, replaced by something a lot less intelligent.

"Oh shit," he muttered. He tried to punch another point on the screen. "Sorry, guys..."

There was hardly enough time to be confused before the room filled up with a bright white light. Like the transporter beam. When the light cleared, they were still in the same little room.

"Maybe it didn't..." Whatever else Stiles was saying disappeared from his mind entirely as the burning regeneration caught up to him, all over, and he slid back against the wall. The last thing he heard was Blair on the radio in his head, yelling for Carson.

~*~*~

Killing was perhaps a bit extreme, but if there was a way to kill a man and bring him back to life to make him start _paying attention_ to what he was playing with, Blair would have considered it. The closest validation he had was the fact that Sheppard had put himself in a coma along with the others.

"Maybe the catch-up sessions on my teams need bumped up after all," said Elizabeth Weir as she walked up beside Blair in the infirmary. It had been over an hour and the Sentinel were all three of them still out cold. And now the man's civilian boss was back on the ship and expecting an explanation for his impulsive streak from Blair, as his military-ranked boss. Blair let out a sigh and looked up at her.

"Well, obviously Sentinel react poorly to the transporter technology. And this is new and rather unique to the SGC's programs, so I have absolutely zero research in on this except..." Blair trailed off and waved her attention to the three men passed out in the beds in front of them.

"I think it's a neurological sensory pain response," Rodney offered up. Blair nodded.

"But not one we can easily just shut down with the dials," Blair added. “John tried those last time and it didn’t work.”

"Every other Sentinel Project policy recommends exposure therapy for abnormal reactions," Rodney said, and there was no missing the sarcasm in the man's reminder.

"I would like to suggest _not_ subjecting them to six-hour comas on a regular basis," Blair replied. Rodney’s attention went quickly to John's face and it made Blair suspicious. He leaned forward, closer to Jim, but angling to get back in Rodney's line of sight from across the room. He raised a hand to rest on Jim's chest and pointed a finger at Rodney and Derek in turn. "I mean it. No letting them do this."

Derek looked from Blair on one side to Rodney on the other side of an infirmary bed from him. "This wasn't _my_ idea."

"Nor mine, considering I wasn't there," added Rodney. "I tried to tell him to wait until I could go with him."

“What, am I going to have to handcuff him to a desk for you?” replied Blair. “We already know he doesn’t listen to me. This stuff is between you two. If he’s going to be stupid like this, that’s fine. It’s _his_ head. But he can’t be doing this to Stiles and Jim.”

“They know it happens now,” Derek pointed out. “Stiles hated this the first time. He’s not going to make the mistake again. And I don’t think the Colonel realized it was going to happen.”

“He should have,” said Rodney, sulking and slouched in his chair. “He’s just too wrapped up in the city right now.”

“Literally, since Jim said the Daedalus hacked their brains when they were like this,” said Blair, waving to Jim in front of him. “And with what he told us this morning, they should be having a nice long conversation with Atlantis in this state.”

Over by the door, Carson leaned on the wall, arms crossed and scowling. He grumbled something in angry Gaelic and Blair nodded. “Agreed,” said Blair. Rodney blinked at them from across the room. He suddenly snapped his fingers and tried to catch Carson’s attention, seemingly on pain of death.

“I need a tablet! Quick!” he said.

“This again?” complained Carson. His friend rolled his eyes, his usual state of annoyed.

“Just trust me! Tablet!” said Rodney. Carson obliged and disappeared to find a tablet. Blair looked back at Rodney.

“What for?” he asked.

“On the Daedalus, John could get into our systems through the interface with the Lantean tech. He wrote half the report I did for the SGC,” said Rodney. He waved toward the man passed out and all but clinically brain-dead on the bed in front of him. “Maybe they can still talk this way.”

“My god,” breathed Elizabeth. Blair just stared at Rodney, jaw slack.

“Just for the record, _that_ falls under the category of stuff that should be shared with the class,” he said.

“He wouldn’t let me dig into it,” Rodney replied, nodding. “He didn’t want to be a lab rat.”

Blair kicked back in his chair again, annoyed. He tossed his hands and gave up. “Yep. I’m gonna kill him.”

Carson showed up then and handed the tablet over to Rodney even as he looked back over at Blair. “No ye won’t. I’ve spent three months of my life keeping that man alive and by god he’ll suffer through it at this point.”

Rodney started toying with the tablet and sent the screen up to the monitor on the wall behind Blair and Elizabeth. The second there was a blank data entry document open, letters started typing on it.

_ _ I _SAID_ I WAS _SORRY_.

Eyes wide, Blair stared.

“Are you serious right now?” he asked out loud.

_ _ Atlantis is trying to reprogram the transporters. DO NOT LET ANYONE USE THEM.

“What!” squawked Rodney. He was instantly on the radio and barking at Zelenka to bring him a laptop. Elizabeth switched to an open channel and ordered everyone to stay out of the transporters. The words on the screen kept going, one letter at a time.

_ _ Apparently this is genetic drift. Not supposed to happen.

_ _ Atlantis says she’s correcting sensors

_ _ (that means it's not my fault, for the record)

“Bullshit,” said Blair, and he couldn’t believe he was arguing with a computer screen. “You knew it happened on the Daedalus.”

_ _ different systems. I forgot

“Aye, that’s why you’re still on medical leave,” said Carson. “Slippery mind ye have these last few weeks.”

_ _ . . .

_ _ THIS is NOT a zone out

“Prove it,” replied Blair. “You’re breathing. Otherwise it looks the same to me.”

_ _ . . .

And the screen went blank. Rodney stared right at John. “Chickenshit. Don’t think you can just be quiet now.”

“Oh, he can,” said Blair, somehow _more_ annoyed at John now that he knew the man was somehow conscious via computer. Derek looked over at Rodney.

“What about Stiles and Ellison?” he asked. “Are they okay?”

A brown font started typing across the screen almost too fast to read.

_ _ NO THIS IS NOT OKAY. THE DATABASE IS HUGE AND I CAN’T READ THIS FAST.

_ _ Also it’s in Lantean and the translation program is sticky this way.

_ _ also by the way the transporter does this shredding thing that hurts like hell and I’m over it

_ _ am I on fire? Feels like you’d be making more noise If I was tho

Rodney had to point Derek’s attention back to the screen behind him before Derek noticed it. “Stiles?” he asked.

_ _ HI

Derek seemed uneasy. He looked over at Carson again. “Can they have an anti inflammatory or something?”

Carson hesitated and looked to Blair. “I’ve no idea, to be frank.”

Blue font showed up on the screen under the brown.

_ _ try it, chief

_ _ seriously, anything is better than this

_ _ herbal shit won’t be strong enough

Blair nodded, looking from the screen to Jim beside him. That sounded close enough. He shrugged and glanced over at Carson. “I guess if you’ve got something, we can try it.”

The blue font blinked up on the screen.

_ _ if it works on me we try it on the kid next

_ _ Sheppard’s getting sent to the mainland after this

“Hey!” said Rodney. “Hello! _I_ can’t work from the mainland.”

“No, no, I’m with Jim on this one,” said Blair, nodding. Elizabeth still seemed slightly shocked but she patted Blair on the shoulder gently.

“I may need Rodney here. We can put the Colonel in the brig,” she replied. Blair shrugged and nodded. He’d take it. The black font didn’t seem happy about the decision.

_ _ I SAID I WAS SORRY.

~*~*~

The heavy duty pain medicine that Carson found seemed to do the trick. Once Ellison woke up and gave the go-ahead, it was given to the other two. The three of them had only been out for three hours, rather than six, which was certainly an improvement. But Derek still had to sit on the bed and let Stiles drape over his back as he tried to balance everything out once he woke up. Even Ellison had spent a half an hour standing behind Sandburg, arm around his shoulders over his shirt collar to help get things right, though he said a lot of it was the medication hangover. Sheppard curled over his knees and scowled at his boots, with Rodney sitting right there next to him looking at least half as irritated as he was confused.

Once Sheppard had shown signs of awareness, Dr. Weir tried talking, not very loud but still, talking. It didn't go over well with Stiles, who tried to crawl into Derek’s back, and Derek had to figure out another way to get him anchored. He carefully dropped to the ground long enough to climb back up onto the bed and get behind Stiles instead. He wove his arms under Stiles' and pulled him back against his chest before lifting his hands to cover Stiles' hands over his ears.

Thankfully by then Jim had recovered further than the other two, so Blair was free to signal for Weir to be quiet. Blair led them both out of the infirmary so the other two could recover without confusing her. When she was gone, Sheppard swung his feet off the bed and turned his back on the room, took Rodney’s computer away from him, and dragged him into a hug.

"You’re an idiot," Rodney informed the Colonel then, quiet at least, but he wrapped his arms around John's shoulders and let him bury his face in his neck.

It felt like ages before Stiles uncurled and relaxed. He kept moving Derek’s hands between covering his ears and covering his eyes or nose, but eventually he moved away to sit up again on his own.

"Just to be clear, hacking the database was cool," he announced quietly. "Could do with less of the pain, though. Did Atlantis get the adjustments made?"

Sheppard still slouched into Rodney, but since he was being talked to, he sat up again. Then he slid off the bed, using his Guide standing in front of him for balance. He at least faked being recovered - the Colonel's heartbeat was still just as jacked up as Stiles' from pain - and looked back over at them.

"I don't know. Can't hear her at the moment. Have everything turned down too far. Probably need to keep it that way for a while."

"It might be the anti inflammatory, too," observed Rodney.

"Yeah," agreed Derek. "And Sandburg is pissed off enough. Don't screw with the dials too much."

Sheppard rolled his eyes and took a tentative step away from his Guide, like he planned on going somewhere. "Sandburg's the one I'm worried about. The brig is a walk-in freezer right now and I might as well go get it over with."

"They were joking," said Rodney, dismissive. He hesitated before looking to Derek for confirmation. "Weren't they?"

"Yes, they were joking," said Stiles. He had both hands wrapped around Derek’s wrist and was still dialed up too high. Derek heard it and felt it in the palms wrenched around him. He tapped Stiles' knee.

"You’re not done yet," he warned him. "I can hear it. Rest."

"No, we gotta go fix it, the Colonel's thing," Stiles said. Derek rolled his eyes.

"It'll wait." Derek looked to Rodney. "He's too dialed up still, too. Same as Stiles. I can hear them both."

Sheppard pulled a face for having been told-on again. Rather than question the intel, Rodney latched onto his arm and shoved John back toward the bed. The Colonel grumbled at him in something that almost sounded like Lantean but climbed up to sit at the pillows. Rodney shoved his way up in front of him and sat on the edge of the bed with the laptop propped on his knees and his feet on the chair. Trying to hide, John leaned forward to slouch and planted his face against the side of Rodney's shoulder. Then Rodney grabbed the blanket that was folded up at the foot of the bed and awkwardly tossed it over the Colonel to bury him better.

"No more talking from you," Rodney said, though it wasn't clear if the order was aimed at all of them or just Sheppard.

Stiles relaxed then and keeled over sideways to lean on Derek. In the long run, grounding like this wasn't a good idea. Stiles wasn't actually trying to balance out on his own, he was just taking the shortcut of basing it off Derek, and taking a nap. But in theory, he wouldn't be making a regular habit out of getting his system lit on fire inside out by a transporter, either. Add in the fact that they had been drugged to get them out of the overload state and it was a little bit of a special circumstance. Derek wrapped his arms around his shoulders and tucked a kiss to his forehead. Stiles was actually asleep on him a minute or so later.

Derek glanced over to see that Rodney had moved around again, sitting slouched over his computer, between John’s legs stretched out either side. The Colonel was still under the blanket but he now leaned over Rodney’s back, like Stiles had done to Derek earlier. He wasn't quite asleep, but he was at least not trying to leave again.

"Not sure how we're supposed to check the transports now," Rodney said, his voice very quiet, like he was speaking to the people with sensitive hearing in the room, not just to hear himself talk. "Everything says it's operational... earlier the system wasn't even _responding_ at all, so I guess that's an improvement. We won't know if it was fixed until someone wants to volunteer for a coma again."

"I'm on it," muttered Sheppard, the words slightly slurred.

"Shut up, jeeze," Rodney replied. "You’re worse than me."

"They don't need to use the transports, right?" said Derek, more of a statement than a question. Rodney glanced over at him.

"That depends. In an emergency, would you rather run potentially four miles from one side of the city to the other, or step in the transporter and only have to run half a mile at most?" he asked. "And before you suggest someone _else_ respond to the emergency four miles away, I'd just like to point out we're in this room at all because _he_ thought he had a way to get Atlantis to give up a secret ZPM storeroom or something. No emergency. Just something to _possibly_ help the city. So we obviously can't assume he's starting from a place of intelligence."

" _He_ can hear you," grumbled Sheppard.

"Good, I'd hate to have to repeat myself," replied Rodney. "Also, you are so _dead_ if Atlantis modified the transports codes so only Sentinel can use them. I will personally-"

"Please, Mer, _shut up_ ," said the man still folded up against him under a blanket. Miraculously, somehow, it worked. Sheppard fell asleep a minute later and the only sound in the room other than sleeping Sentinel was McKay tapping on his laptop keyboard.

Sandburg and Ellison came back eventually, not looking terribly surprised at what they found. Ellison was hiding behind sunglasses, so he wasn't back up to par yet. He took over a chair while Blair walked over to check on Stiles. Derek looked back at his questioning expression and shrugged.

"He's fine, just sleeping," he said, chin tilting to where Stiles had sprawled against his chest. Considering Derek still sat up, propped up and supported by the bed, and Stiles was twisted to sit sideways between his legs, it probably wasn't that comfortable, but Stiles could tie himself in a pretzel and still sleep, Derek had learned. Blair nodded acceptance and pat Derek on the shoulder.

"He said no brig, though," Derek added as an afterthought, but it was fair warning. "It was an accident."

Sandburg rolled his eyes. Over on the other bed, Rodney glanced sideways like he was going to pretend - badly - that he wasn't listening in. Sheppard was awake, Derek had heard the change in his breathing, but he was apparently good with avoiding it a while longer. Stiles, strangely, hadn't responded to Blair standing just at his back, either.

"No, no brig," Blair confirmed. Behind him, Jim nodded.

"The Colonel is a pilot. He's basically programmed to take care of his ship, and that's all he was doing. We had warning on this shit, but none of us were thinking about it," said Ellison.

"He's gonna get crap for it until he dies, though," Blair added, looking pointedly over at the other two. And Sandburg's words hit Derek then as maybe more than a joke. His heartbeat hadn't changed. They were on a five-year contract, but probably not only a five-year life-expectancy. Even the guys who were pissed off and hurting were talking about the guy they were mad at like they were pack.

It stuck out because Derek had spent months trying to make sense of the pack he had tried to build for himself, and he had bullied everyone out of it except for Stiles, because the guy just called bullshit every time. And he was the only one who hadn't tried to kill him in the end. The idea that Derek and Stiles had bullied each other into a situation where they found a group of people who innately pulled together like a pack, without even knowing what it was, was suddenly unignorable.

It wasn't just that Derek and Stiles had taken to _calling_ them pack, it was maybe that they actually _were_. They weren't going anywhere, either. Sandburg and Sheppard were going to argue like Sheppard and McKay argued, but there were no knives aimed at anybody’s backs. It was a different... complaining. Somehow, Derek could see that they were all factoring each other into future plans as much as Derek and Stiles were gambling that the other members of the new team would come through for them.

"You okay, kid?" Jim Ellison asked, slouched in the chair behind Blair and staring up at Derek.

"Yeah, I'm fine," said Derek. He was, mostly. Just surprised. From the other side, he heard a quiet laugh and glanced over to see Sheppard watching him, too, still slouched under the blanket cape against his Guide.

"Now _that's_ funny," he said. He sat up and shook his head.

"What?" Blair asked. Sheppard tilted his head toward Derek just enough to make it clear who he was talking about.

"I know he knows better," said Sheppard, amused enough and sounding closer to normal. "But he did it anyway."

"Define _fine_." Stiles suddenly tapped Derek’s arm, his face still tucked against his neck. "We call bullshit. Sourwolf went all Emowolf."

"I did not," grumbled Derek. He dropped his arms away from Stiles and pushed at him gently to let him sit up. Stiles grumbled back at him.

"Not my fault we can tell," he complained, burrowing in like he didn’t plan to move. Blair shook his head and patted Derek’s shoulder again.

"You get used to it," Sandburg promised. Derek wasn't sure he would. He liked it better when he could lie.

~*~*~


	5. Chapter 5

Carson wasn't as much of a pushover on the incident as Sandburg and Stilinski. The only reason there wasn't another week of medical leave added in was that everyone knew an extra week of unsupervised time to wander the city would only end up with John getting himself into trouble. Alongside anyone with him.

The mandate from Elizabeth came down that they could only clear one building a day, as Zelenka deemed appropriate in consideration with their power supply, and - as she had very little faith in Rodney's ability to keep John out of trouble - Zelenka would have to be present for any exploration that wasn't just bringing the city back online. Rodney was annoyed at the implication that, firstly, he needed Zelenka to accomplish something, and secondly, that he needed Zelenka to handle anything at all relating to _his_ Sentinel. John just bit his tongue and stood tall as he accepted the order, because Elizabeth threatened to take it through Sandburg and make it military-official.

And then she sent them to play taxi to start bringing people back from the mainland. Rodney had loud complaints about being taken off-duty while John finished his medical leave, to which the Director promised she would pull him back if Zelenka ran into something he couldn't handle. Rodney was fairly confident that Zelenka could handle what was left to get online and merged with the Ancient systems, even if he wasn't going to feed the man's ego by saying so. It was the principle of the thing. He just turned and followed John out of the office.

They were met at the bottom of the stairs down into the gateroom by the rest of their team. Sandburg was smiling. That couldn’t be a good thing at all.

“All settled with Dr. Weir?” Blair asked. John nodded warily.

“Yes,” he said, very slowly. “And tasked with ferrying the first groups back. So I stay out of trouble.”

Blair nodded and waved toward the hallway that went the exact wrong direction. “Go pack to stay the night. On the mainland.”

“Wait, we’re camping now?” Rodney balked, very unenthusiastic about having to go camping. He looked to John sharply; this was definitely his fault. “As in, fires and dirt floors and-”

“Yep. I’m co-opting the Director’s orders for training. Because that’s still a thing we’re doing here,” said Blair. He waved between himself and Ellison at his shoulder. “That’s why we got the get-out-of-jail-free card, remember? Months of torment known as training.”

“Everybody?” John asked. Rodney looked to where Stiles slouched looking back at them, sitting on the stairs that led out to their apartments, which were now so very far away from where they needed to be. Derek stood in front of him, idly kicking at Stiles’ shoes.

“Everybody,” confirmed Ellison. John nodded and caught Rodney by the elbow to steer him the right direction.

“Pretend it’s off-world,” John said with a false-cheer. Rodney mocked him, annoyed.

“You _owe_ me,” he decided quietly. It wasn't Rodney’s fault John had gone and put every Sentinel in the city in a coma. And this was very clearly their alternative to the brig, Rodney could see a bright red direct line between the two.

"Yeah, well, the mess is a little low on blue jell-o for a while, so unless you wanna get specific, we'll have to put this one on credit," John replied. The challenge was delivered with a smile and Rodney squinted at him as he tried to ignore the double entendre "You can go camping, Rodney. We do it all the time."

"Yes, and the last three times we've had to have been a wonderful vacation, haven't they?" Rodney returned. The jibes stopped at the reminder and John let go of Rodney’s elbow to throw his arm over his shoulder instead and tug him in for a sideways hug. He pressed a quick kiss to Rodney's jaw.

"Good point," he said. He looked over at Blair then. "Are you particular about where this training happens?"

"Nature. Not the city," said Blair with a nod. John grinned broadly.

"Then I've got a slight change in plans," said John. "As it _happens_ , I owe an apology to Teyla. And Rodney’s still a little particular about camping. And you and Daniel like meeting up with new people, right?" John asked. Blair shrugged.

"We've already met the Athosians. That's where Daniel is now, with Ronon and Teyla," he said.

"I'm not talking about the Athosians. I'm talking about their cousins," said John.

"Oh," said Rodney. He nodded. "Better fire management, less dirt, I like this."

"And there's fishing there. And surfing. And it's a more well-populated area. Good food, good brew," John went on. "And we have a week at least before I can be back here without ending up in the brig apparently."

"Surfing is a real thing?" Stiles asked. Rodney looked over at the kid to make sure he wasn't still loopy from the drugs a few hours earlier. John startled like the teen had just kicked him in the gut.

"I'm still waiting for the punchline," said Ellison, drawing their attention back.

"No, we're going, there's no punchline," said John, decided on it. He waved over at Stiles. " _He's_ learning to surf."

"Going where?" Blair asked.

"Let me pull rank on this one and I'll tell you," said John. He still had an arm over Rodney’s shoulder and kept him in the line of fire as the two Captains maintained a staring contest for their procedural authority over the Lt. Colonel.

"Atlantis is not involved in this equation," Rodney pointed out. "His judgment is not currently compromised."

"Gee, thanks, Rodney," said Sheppard, not actually sounding thankful.

"No, that's a valid point," agreed Blair. Again, Rodney sensed sarcasm, but if it got them back to the safe little village with the Molanbe and their comparative comforts of wood floors and solid walls and semi-permanent fire-pits, Rodney would accept it. Blair looked over at Ellison, and the Sentinel just rolled his eyes. His Guide considered it as the group walked and Stiles charged out ahead of them to walk backwards.

"Really, though, we can go surfing here?" he asked. John shrugged innocently and looked to Sandburg, because now the man was keeping Stiles waiting, too. Blair looked between the two Sentinel and then shook his head.

"I know this is stupid, but, okay, fine," he said.

To his credit, John didn't break out in a victory dance, but he squeezed Rodney’s shoulder and was all but vibrating for the effort to be an adult. He still smiled broadly at the win. "So we're going off-world to go surfing. And for training. And for not breaking Atlantis."

Blair wagged a finger at him. "I knew it."

John grinned back at him. "Hey, we gotta find out who's right about the 'gate sooner or later. Might as well be while we're still out on medical anyway."

"Wait... _wormhole_ -gate?" Stiles asked, trying to recover from the whiplash of being happy to get to learn surfing somewhere and the shock of going through the stargate.

"I told you, it's perfectly safe," Rodney reminded him. John nodded.

"And we'll go when we get back from the mainland. So we'll just take the Jumper. You won't even notice a thing," said John.

"Isn't that the same thing the dentist says before he pulls the tooth?" Ellison asked. John was unfazed.

"If it's gotta go, it's gotta go, might as well be now," he confirmed.

"Oh my god," sighed Blair.

~*~*~

The suggestion of going to see the Molanbe did go a long way toward the goal of getting Teyla to stop glaring at John every time he opened his mouth to speak. She had no complaints about it because she owed them her own apology for missing their planned arrangements of taking them to Atlantis. The time for that had come and gone while Teyla was stuck with John and the team back on Earth, though she said Elizabeth had sent someone with Halling to pass along the unexpected change in plans only a day after Teyla had left Atlantis. Even still, John figured it was another crime on the list she was probably keeping tallied up.

Even Elizabeth was agreeable to sending the new Sentinel team off-world for longer than just a day.

"Not that we haven't missed your smiling face, John, but we need things to get back to normal while they still can, and if your team starts waking up things we don’t yet understand what to do with, all at once, we could end up in trouble," she said, and that did seem reasonable.

Whatever. It got John out of playing taxi more than once. And Daniel was entirely on board with going off-world through the 'gate because the man had already done it hundreds of times.

"I thought Carson didn't want you guys going through the 'gate?" he asked. John shrugged it off.

"Carson wants Rodney to ease up on the stress and take up regular exercise, too, but that doesn't mean the doc gets what he wants," replied John. Beside him in the copilot's spot, Rodney huffed and mumbled something about getting plenty of exercise, _thank you_.

They off-loaded their extra passengers and brought on a big box that John had brought back from his trip to Earth. The most obnoxious part of the purchase was that, because of the price tag, he'd had to have Rodney sign off on it. But Caldwell had made room for it on the Daedalus and sent it down to Atlantis for him without any approvals or extra signatures, so not _everything_ was a pain in the ass.

All told, the Jumper was a little cramped, but they made it. Elizabeth cleared them for 'gate travel and the four inexperienced members of his team crowded into the front of the craft like there was something special to see. And there was, considering they had never seen the stargate in action. But through the view shield of a Jumper, they certainly weren't going to get the same experience as walking through it themselves. Sheppard figured they could baby-step it. Just in case Carson wasn't being paranoid.

So in case the doc _was_ right, John sent the controls over to Rodney to take them through. "Just don't get us stuck in the door," he warned, a completely unnecessary jab just to make Rodney glower at him. His scientist got the Jumper through without a bump and John took the controls back on the other side.

Funny thing was, nobody seemed to notice when they went through the stargate. John smirked at the viewer as he heard Stiles blurt out "That was it?"

"It's a bit different on the ground," Daniel promised him, and Rodney grunted his agreement at the description.

"I didn't feel anything at all," Stiles reported. He looked back through the door at Ellison. "Did you see anything?"

"Nope," said Jim. Rodney sighed.

"Am I going to have to explain this again?" he asked, suffering for the abuse of his team's willful ignorance.

"I'm not turning this car around," John warned Rodney, taunting the man's tone. Rodney hardly noticed. He held up his hands to start illustrating the wormhole dynamics from one end to the other.

"Buffer. Gate. Come out the buffer on the other side. Nothing there to see. You _blink_ in, you _blink_ out," McKay said. Daniel shrugged and nodded, letting the bullet point version stand.

"Then why's everyone so worried about us going through it?" Stiles asked.

"Well, it's the same as the transporter, isn't it?" Daniel said. "Effectively, anyway."

"Different technologies though," said Rodney. "And the buffers on the ends for the 'gate... you’re effectively in stasis before you enter the wormhole. Your body doesn't know it gets dematerialized. So it doesn't... freak out."

Blair snorted at the notion that a coma was considered a _freak-out_. John squinted out at the afternoon sun beyond the window.

"And Atlantis is going to fix the transporter problem. The transporters were expecting the pure Lantean code and putting us back together to that... and that's not us. So whatever they do for the rest of the Tau’ri that doesn't leave _them_ burning on fire... she can make it happen for us, now," he pointed out.

"That seriously doesn't make me feel better, man," said Blair.

"We'll get it ironed out," said Sheppard, because he was more stubborn than his city's AI.

" _And_ there's no buffers on the transporters," Rodney pointed out, just to get back on track.

"You might still get a headache though," said John as an afterthought. "I was pretty beat up the last time I came through the 'gate, so I don't know if it was the 'gate or the Daturans."

"You are really bad at the whole _timely information_ thing," Blair offered up. John shrugged it off.

"Seconded," said Teyla.

"Hey! I get points for trying," said John. "I'm not exactly used to reporting in about this stuff to anybody but Carson. And even then, not much seemed important."

Sandburg smacked him up the back of the head for that, which struck Sheppard as ironic but he kept the observation to himself.

He set the Jumper down somewhere about halfway between the Molanbe village and the ocean shore, along the path he remembered the kids showing him the last time he was there. They had gear to camp, tents and everything if the village couldn't put them all up on no notice, and the area seemed like it would do. As long as no one was allergic to the sea grass and fronds climbing over the sand.

They hadn't announced their visit, so Sheppard had flown the ship cloaked and left it that way. He opened the back gate with a thought. "Let’s leave our stuff. Pack it in light until we know what the plans are."

Everyone seemed agreeable to that, though Rodney complained about not having so much as a tablet to worry about. John smacked his arm and handed over an LSD from the back of the Jumper as they walked out. "There ya go. Now you've got a tablet for the trip."

Rodney glared at him for it, but he still snatched the tiny box from his hand. It gave him something to fuss with while he walked since he and John hadn't been allowed weapons more than knives and the handguns strapped on their legs. No P90s to carry until they had some range training with the louder weapons. Rodney was cleared for the P90s still, but Sandburg was big on this team solidarity thing and if a rule or an order applied to the Sentinel then it applied to the Guide. Ronon and Teyla and Daniel had the big stuff. Stiles had a werewolf.

The group took off up the sunny trail, John leading the way because he was the only one who knew it. As they walked, John looked up in the sky and saw the glowing silhouette of one of the planet's two moons off on the horizon. He pointed it out to Derek.

"Do we need to worry about that?"

Derek looked where he was pointed and then shrugged and shook his head. "No. It's... well, at home, it's the full moon stage of the cycle."

John nodded. "Right. This planet has two moons from what I remember. They're just not in sync."

"The two back home are nearly synced on the same orbital plane," said Rodney. "I suppose that makes it stronger, then, for you? Twice the pull. I know the sea surge gets stronger, about once every three months."

Hale stopped walking entirely. Stiles' jaw dropped.

"Atlantis has two moons?" Derek asked. The Atlanteans present all nodded.

"I... I honestly have no idea what will happen," said Derek. John stepped back toward him.

"Well, best guess then. If this planet is at that stage of the cycle, can you handle whatever will happen? We can go back any time," he said.

"One, sure. I don’t know about two," said Derek.

Stiles didn't look any more confident about it. "Can we just... send him back to the Daedalus to avoid it, like last time?"

"Daedalus isn't anywhere near this planet. We have to go back to Atlantis either way. And Daedalus might not still be there by the time Atlantis hits the next full moon. So it sounds like we're playing this one by ear," said John. He looked to Daniel. "You good with that?"

"Uh... I'll let you know if I get the urge to murder things?" Daniel replied. Derek nodded confirmation of that plan, so John was good with trying it. He looked to Teyla.

"They're your people. Are you comfortable with this?" he asked. Teyla nodded, her usual smile a grim line.

"I believe we can contain any problems if Derek says it is necessary. And my people have our own stories of your werewolves, so I don't believe Daniel or Derek will be in any harm from us," she said.

John accepted that and turned back to the path. He cast a glance over at Daniel, though, hearing the man's heartbeat loud enough over the ocean waves behind them. He was worried, but Sheppard couldn't exactly blame him for it; none of them knew what they were in for. Derek had a lifetime of experience with his particular forces of nature, but Daniel had a little under a month, and he had lived in a bubble for most of it, protected from all things natural or supernatural otherwise. And one way or another, he was going to get a crash course in catching up when the tides shifted with the moon cycle, so it was probably better they tried him out on a planet that didn't have twin moons in a nearly synchronized orbit.

The kids from the village saw them on the way and there was a chorus of shouting and small children screeching that managed to surprise John. He was slow on the dial and just cheated, reaching for Rodney, on the excuse of steering him away from a ten-year-old with an obvious hugging agenda. Aella was easily scooped up and away, and the kid giggled loudly in John's ear as she claimed her hug. Then she was passed off to her aunt and John snagged Rodney’s hand to keep him closer than the press of kids.

John let Teyla handle the explanations of their drop-in visit and wasn't surprised at all when they were sent back for their things with a batch of kids to use as pack animals.

"Does that mean we're forgiven for missing our last scheduled visit?" Sheppard asked Teyla as they turned back.

"We'll have to arrange one we don't cancel before we leave or I'm sure they'll just follow us back," replied Teyla.

The noise level went up significantly when the kids saw the Jumper, a dozen questions all aimed directly at Rodney following the amazed exclamations at the weird technology with the moving back gate. Backpacks and duffle bags were pulled out and the older kids claimed them blindly while the younger ones tried to climb on the long crate in the back of the ship.

"What’s this?" asked Aella, pulling on the locked lid.

"Something for tomorrow," replied Sheppard. He shouldered his bag and herded the stragglers back outside. He found Stiles out there with a few locals John hadn't spent much time with, closer to the kid’s age, too. He seemed rather dazed, a wide-eyed kid talking to aliens from another galaxy that weren't all that different from him to start with. Derek looked like a border collie with a dozen wandering sheep to herd up and didn't know where to begin.

John shook his head as he closed the Jumper back up. Teyla, Ronon, Blair, and Jim had all started the trek back with the kids who had taken the bulk of their stuff and taken off running, while Rodney and Daniel waited for the other three. Aella skipped along beside them, randomly pulling at John's backpack straps to make the canvas let out the plastic-sounding _ziiip_ that seemed to be an amusing oddity to her.

"All of your things are strange," she decided.

"Yeah, but it's pretty cool stuff anyway," John replied. Aella shrugged.

"I don't know what that means," she said. And she had him there.

~*~*~

Stiles didn't know what to do with the whole existence of the Molanbe people. They were normal kids, like him, except he knew for a fact he wasn't on Earth. It was somehow different to run into people on another planet, in another galaxy, and see other humans. More than that, other humans who spoke English. There was a weird lilt to it, but it was definitely still English.

They had a big community dinner, with big fire pits that sent up a weird smelling smoke, and food that... looked weird. Stiles stared at purple mashed pulp that he wasn't sure was edible, and forked-looking beans, and something that was definitely meat but he could tell in the dark was still very pink.

"You’re probably safe," Blair said, noting Stiles' reluctance. "Not very spicy. Kinda weird texture."

"It's purple..."

“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, either, Dorothy,” replied Jim. He held the bowl up slightly. “You should be fine. I’m a little worried about that one.” He pointed toward Sheppard, who looked up sharply, confused. Jim tapped the spoon on the bowl. “It’s a little fruity.”

John reached over and pulled Rodney’s plate from his hands and stood up with them to go investigate the cook’s table. Stiles looked suspiciously back into his bowl before trying the food. He survived. It needed salt to cut the sweet, which didn’t make any sense to him; regular basic food groups shouldn’t taste like candy. His food was half gone before the Colonel came back and handed Rodney a plate that was mostly the beans and purple potatoes.

“They made a marinade thing for the... bird. Or whatever. Close enough to citrus that we’ll take a pass,” John explained to his Guide. Rodney muttered his thanks to the unofficial food tester and something about sticking to MREs.

Sandburg organized some kind of storytelling session after dinner was cleaned up, and the older kids and their parents hung around to swap histories with the new guys, with Teyla and Sheppard gatekeeping somewhat. There were things the Atlantis team still couldn't share with some places, because of the part where the city wasn't supposed to exist anymore. Stiles wasn’t sure how they were going to handle that detail when Teyla took her cousins back to Atlantis to meet with her people, but he wasn’t going to ask, either.

It was an accident, but the group ended up on scary stories, somebody asking about the rumors of the Wraith being awakened early. The Colonel clammed up after that and slouched back in the shadow behind Rodney, away from the fire as he leaned back on one of the logs everyone around the fire pit used as either benches to sit on or back support to lean on.

Stiles tuned in curiously. It was interesting to hear people talk about the Wraith as real things instead of just read about them in black-lined military reports. The kids who were Stiles' age were barely walking when the village had been "culled" and they still chimed in with things they remembered about it. And Teyla and Ronon had stories about AR-1 running in with them, with things in their versions that hadn't made it into the military reports Stiles had been allowed to see redacted versions of.

For some reason, somebody had blacked out the part where John Sheppard defaulted to the lead military officer on the Atlantis expedition because the Wraith fed on the other guy who was _supposed_ to have had the job. Sheppard hadn't been a Lt. Colonel much more than six months before Stiles and Derek signed up. They were _all_ learning on the job. And Sheppard had still managed to get his team out of whatever trouble they got into, but Teyla said they had still lost friends and teammates trying to take the fight to the Wraith.

"And made enemies," said Rodney, his first contribution to the conversations. "That certainly makes things more interesting, huh? Knowing there's the Wraith out to get you, and there's this whole other people that want to take you out, too. Your enemies' enemy isn't always your friend, as it turns out."

" _Enemies_ might be a bit of a strong word. They let us leave with our heads still attached," Colonel Sheppard replied lightly. "We'll just leave them alone and they'll leave us alone, right?"

"Right," said Rodney, sarcasm evident. The topic seemed to concern Teyla’s family and friends and there was a murmur of questions aimed her way. Teyla put her hand on her sister-in-law's arm to settle Della's worried expression. She added a smile.

"It helps when they don't know where we are," said Teyla. "So they present no danger to us."

That seemed to calm the locals, but Stiles looked over at Blair. The Guide was not very at ease about it. Sheppard thwacked Rodney on the leg for stirring trouble, so he had noticed, too.

"Anyway. Unless there's something planned for the day tomorrow, I brought the surfboards I promised the kids, and I thought we could take them out," the Colonel said, abruptly changing the topic. "Figured I could leave a couple here permanently if a responsible adult wants to keep track of them. So the younger kids don't get in trouble out there in the water on their own."

There were a few volunteers to learn how to watch the kids the next day, and the adults broke into more stories, happier ones, about how the kids had been asking to take boats out into the water to surf with, for weeks after Sheppard had left the last time. The kids that had been shadowing Stiles and Derek all afternoon started saying they wanted to take the day to learn, too, and the adults started teasing them for the fact that they had skipped out on the chance the last time. At least adults being jerks to kids was apparently a universal affliction.

It was decided, however, that they could have the day off of their work to learn with the younger kids. And, given that the Atlantis team had the expectation of staying for a few days, there would be some kind of celebration before they left.

"With some of that... what's it called, the stuff you sent back with us last time?" Sheppard asked.

"The winter brine?" Della asked. The Colonel nodded and snapped his fingers.

"Yes! _Love_ that stuff," he said, all smiles and cheer. It didn't sound very tasty to Stiles, but Teyla broke into a big grin, and Ronon let out a laugh.

"What?" Blair asked.

"Nuthin," said Sheppard. "I just like that stuff. It's sweet and it didn't make us sick last time we were here."

Daniel looked like he was reading the Colonel, amused. "What proof is it?"

Sheppard shrugged again. Blair leaned forward. "Wait, alcohol?"

"Probably about fifty-proof," said Rodney, earning him another smack on the leg for tattling. "What? It was strong. You were _drunk_."

"That was the idea, yes," replied John. "And it's the idea again. And Carson isn't here to tell me _no,_ and I'm not in a coma, so I'm gonna enjoy the winter brine."

Jim looked over at Derek and Stiles. "What about you two? Do you drink?"

"We're not old enough," Derek reported dutifully, because if they had learned anything from training so far, it was that Captain Ellison was a stickler for rules.

"Atlantis is an international expedition," Blair pointed out.

"And we're not on an American outpost at the moment," added Sheppard. "So. Technically speaking. If you're old enough for our hosts' rules, then you're old enough."

"Just don't cause an intergalactic incident," said Jim.

"No pressure," Daniel chimed in. He looked over at Sheppard then. "Let's maybe just plan this party for some night that, you know, it's not _bright_ out."

John nodded and squinted up at the sky. Stiles did, too, instantly tracking the moon. It was definitely brighter here than it had ever been at home. And nearly full.

"That will be tomorrow, right? Does the cycle look the same here?" Stiles asked.

"It won't be exactly the same," said Rodney, offering a shrug. "But close enough. I'd guess tomorrow, too, but that's _just_ a guess."

"So we'll head out camping tomorrow night," said Sheppard.

"Sentinel stay here," said Blair. And nobody argued that. Stiles didn't like it, but he wasn't going to say anything about it surrounded by the Molanbe. They had gear back at the Jumper for it, and the big box that held the surfboards at the moment was more than big enough for Daniel if he couldn't handle it. It would be fine.

Stiles looked over at Derek, both excited about being included with the team like an adult and just as anxious about the full moon. He wasn't sure which one was supposed to win and figured Derek would clue him in on it. But Sourwolf was his usual self, behind a mask, and the slightly faster heartbeat didn't answer anything for Stiles at all.

The chatter wound down to the preparation plans, and Ronon volunteered to go hunting to help out. Derek started to say something but stopped himself. Stiles looked sideways at him.

"What, you want to go? Go," he said. Derek shook his head.

"Not tomorrow," he said, his voice very quiet. "Daniel might not be able to contain it if it kicks up his prey drive."

“Or it might be a way he can use it,” replied Stiles. Daniel sat not far away and scrunched his face up at them.

“Or he can sit over here and get paranoid listening to everybody chat about him in public,” he muttered. Stiles zipped his mouth and glanced around to make sure Ronon and Teyla still had the group’s attention. Sheppard stood up then, added a theatrical stretch, and then poked Rodney in the head with his knuckles.

“I’m heading in. Kids are going to be breaking down the door at sunrise,” he said. Stiles looked over at Jim, suddenly reminded of their usual sunrise routines. The Captain smirked and nodded.

“Yes, you’re still running first thing this week,” Ellison said. Sheppard froze where he stood.

“ _That_ is such... _so_ worthy of generic insubordination, but I’m going to bed,” he said, somehow managing to avoid adding another mile to their run at the very last second.

“Wait till you see what putting your CO in a coma gets you,” replied Blair happily. Sheppard’s shoulders sagged and he stepped over the log to escape the cozy threats from the fire pit. Rodney still sat on the big bench-log and squinted over at them.

“That’s not a team-spirit, shared-misery project, right? I generally prefer not to have to go running unless my life quite literally depends on it,” he pointed out. Ellison arched an eyebrow at him.

“You realize, don’t you, that _everyone_ would be safer if you went running more often than _only_ when your life depended on it?” Jim asked. Rodney gaped at him.

“Well, I mean, we don’t go off-world and find trouble _every_ day,” he replied. Sheppard stood behind Rodney still, a surprised look on his face.

“Wait, are you saying we’re changing up the policy on Guides and training?” he asked. Stiles bit back a laugh and looked to Blair. That was not going to go over well.

“Thinking about it. We’ll try it out this week,” said Jim. Sandburg hung his head as Derek offered up a very insincere “Sorry for your loss. Your sleep will be missed.” At which, Stiles lost the battle and buried his face in Derek’s shoulder to stifle the laughter.

~*~*~


	6. Chapter 6

The kids did show up not long after sunrise, and they picked their way across the meeting room, peeking at faces until they found the one they were looking for. Sheppard and McKay had taken a corner of the room, with the Guide voluntarily backed into a wall specifically because they knew the kids would be looking for them directly.

Jim was awake by the time the door opened but he didn't stir, too curious to see what the kids' greeting would be to risk spoiling the kids' fun. He stayed tucked in his sleeping bag and watched as the older kids shoved the youngest one into the proverbial lion's den to make the first effort at waking up Sheppard. The Colonel slept pretty soundly when McKay did, which meant he wasn't at all paying attention to his surroundings and instead tuned in only on his Guide in his sleep. It was something they had noticed a month ago, and it had really only gotten worse. Eventually they were going to have to work on it if they expected to go off-world over night very often, otherwise Jim expected they would end up very dead, very easily.

The eight-year-old crouched right in front of John and was timidly saying his name without getting so much as an eye twitch in response. His breathing said he was as soundly asleep as McKay was behind him. Meanwhile, Hale was awake, Ronon was awake, and even Daniel was rousing.

"Cul-nell!" the kid hissed.

Jim decided it was going to end badly if it was allowed to continue and he sat himself up. Half the nosy kids retreated to the door.

"Sheppard, your fan club is here," Jim said, loudly. It broke through enough that the kid didn't start poking the Colonel or otherwise potentially endanger himself. Sheppard was awake seconds later and sitting up. The kids were chased out, Sheppard going with them to look into making them sort out breakfast first. Which left everyone else for Jim to wake up.

Unsurprisingly, Blair and McKay were the only hold-outs. The promise of food won them over. It was just a small, insignificant detail that Jim lied and the closest McKay got to breakfast was a PowerBar to get him through the morning run. The proper breakfast was waiting for them when they got back, some kind of scramble and flat bread provided by their hosts.

Jim didn't know the lay of the land really, but he had asked around the day before and the area was really pretty tame. There were plenty of animals to worry about, but that was the same as taking off running anywhere on Earth. So he enlisted Ronon and Teyla's help and appointed them Sheppard's babysitters for the run. Everyone else could tackle the terrain as it was safe, and Jim would hang back to make sure there were no problems with the Guides. But Sheppard was to run and push it. It would stretch his senses out in the planet's terrain, and test him, especially after the last month of scrubbed-air and mechanical surroundings. And if there was trouble, they had their radios and Jim would have the Guides.

"Half an hour run," Ellison announced as they worked on warm ups. "And Colonel, you're sticking with Ronon and Teyla. Use your senses to find your way home if you get lost."

Sheppard stared at him before looking around at the old rutted road they would be following that supposedly led to another village a few miles away. "I haven't been able to keep up with them in... Months."

Ronon smiled broadly and thumped him on the shoulder. "It's gonna be good."

"Remember, I have to still go teach a buncha kids how to _not drown_ on surfboards after this," John said sincerely, pointing back toward the ocean a mile or two in the opposite direction. Teyla patted his arm and then started pushing him down the road. There were a few colorful complaints about poorly disguised revenge-hazing but John took off and made it to a run at the others' prompting.

"I can't keep up with them," Rodney pointed out. Jim nodded.

"Neither could Blair or Daniel. So we have two groups. You just have to keep up with Blair," he said, smiling easily. Blair scowled at him before looking back at Rodney, the two of them sizing each other up to guess how dead they would be at the end of ten minutes. Jim looked to Daniel, Derek, and Stiles.

"Take your pick which one you're running with: us, or go catch up to the Colonel and keep him moving," he said. Stiles' eyebrows climbed up.

"Wait... Is this really because of the transporter?" he asked.

"Nope," said Jim, even as Blair nodded and added an emphatic, "Yep."

Rodney was not amused. "That was in no way _my_ fault-"

Jim rolled his eyes. "I didn't say it was. I said it's a liability to the rest of the team if we have to wait for you when we're being chased by Wraith. _He's_ running for a half an hour, _you're_ running for fifteen minutes. Unless we wait around bitching about it, then we might as well put in the full time."

Suddenly, like magic, Rodney had the wherewithal to quit complaining and he and Blair started to figure out how to jog. With Stiles and Derek flitting around them encouragingly to make sure the Guides didn't make them get stuck on a half-hour run. Jim brought up the rear and barked at Sandburg to light a fire, just to grin as his friend turned around long enough to flip him off. Daniel hung back with Jim.

"Is this the plan all week?" he asked. Jim nodded and shrugged.

"As long as those two survive day one," he replied.

Jim wasn't exactly a stickler for the fifteen minutes plan, either, because Rodney and Blair were able to keep up a bantering argument about whether or not the existence of werewolves - despite Rodney's initial disbelief - also allowed for the existence of ghosts when they factored in string theory and alternate universes. If they could argue, they could jog, and while it wasn't running, it was at least a good start.

But Jim did make sure they got good and lost away from the road, out among vine-covered trees and bramble bushes that had fruit and smelled sweet. They got turned around a few times. And then he told Stiles to figure out how to get them back to camp. The kid stopped in his tracks and stared at Ellison, jaw slack.

"Me?" he asked. "How?"

"You've got five senses, take your pick," said Jim. Rodney took the excuse to find a rock to sit on, but Blair quickly hauled him back to his feet before they were all stuck there for an hour.

"Come on, he's making Sheppard do it. You can do it," Daniel offered up.

"Yeah, but that's like putting the Colonel on KP, and I didn't do anything this time," Stiles complained, still obviously thinking over how he was going to find his way back. Rather than give the kid KP for whining about it, Jim nodded toward Derek, because the kid's Guide probably had a few ideas to help out.

"Think of it as an open book quiz then," he said. "Hale can help."

And instantly Stiles was looking to Derek. Blair smiled over at Jim as Derek verbally walked Stiles through his options to find their way back. And, Jim noted, Rodney was paying attention to the pair, though Lord knew what the scientist would conclude from their lesson. Daniel wandered off on his own, but he came back after twenty yards because the idea he had been investigating didn't pan out. Stiles seemed ready to lead the way by then and they headed back. Mostly they walked back, so that Stiles could pick his way around it as he tried to find the way back to the road, but Jim had gotten actual exercise out of both Sandburg and McKay, so it wasn't bad for the first day.

It wasn't long before Stiles got the road back under their shoes, and Jim was all too happy to make the older Guides resume running. McKay was dead on his feet by the time they made it back to the village, and Jim rewarded him with a plate of eggs and some kind of meat-protein-thing that seemed alright as long as he ignored the fact that they were a fluffy green.

Sheppard's team showed up not long later and the man was out of breath but not in as bad a shape as his Guide. Still, John pointed between Jim and Teyla and shook his head. "I don't know which of you hates me more right now, for that. That was... Evil."

"I'm fairly certain that honor would still belong to Blair," said Teyla. She had also gone running and it very clearly showed, but she was in general more graceful than Sheppard. The woman squeezed his arms warmly as she smiled at him, then made her way to find out where her family had settled for the day, and probably find better breakfast fare.

The very second Sheppard sat down next to McKay with his breakfast, the scientist started complaining about the abuse, but also documenting the end results which were that he was tired but he felt better but he was hot but he had more energy and he felt like he could breathe better... And Sheppard just nodded through it and stuffed his face. It was annoyingly familiar, Jim thought as he finally sat down beside Blair.

"Captain Ellison got us lost," Stiles reported when he could get a word in. "But then he had me get us back to the road."

"Yeah, I know exactly how _that_ feels," replied Sheppard.

"Are we adding five minutes tomorrow?" Jim asked, innocent. Blair smacked his shoulder and ground out, "I will _kill you slowly_." over his half-disappeared and probably-not-vegan breakfast.

The kids allowed Sheppard exactly five minutes for food before they showed up asking about surfing.

"What about the rule, no going swimming for a half an hour after eating?" Rodney asked. The kids were absolutely baffled by this supposed rule.

"Milky Way thing," Sheppard said to Rodney. His Guide spluttered at him for it.

"That doesn't make it no longer true in Pegasus," he replied. "Don't even think about it."

"So we'll just make them walk really slow," Sheppard replied, placating. "Besides, we still have to get the boards from the Jumper, and make sure everybody knows what to look out for in the water. And some of the new kids have to know what the hell they're even out there for."

"Surfing," said Stilinski. Jim grinned at the ignorance.

"Hope you like calisthenics," he offered. Stiles tossed his head back and squinted at him like he had just suggested something insane.

"Huh? In the water?"

"You gotta be able to move on the board," Jim replied. "Up and down and all over, and still keep your balance. You should probably practice some on the sand before you get out there and crack your head."

That got Sheppard's attention. "You almost sound like you have an idea what you're talking about."

Jim shrugged, not about to say one way or the other. He wasn't about to admit it had been thirty years since he had been on a board.

But an hour and a half later, when they had the boards out, Ellison was out in the water, shaking off the rust as a lifeguard as Sheppard worked the kids through different lessons, three at a time. The Lt. Colonel had bought five longboards for the kids to learn on, and the only thing he complained about was that McKay had been required to sign off on the cost that came out of his own bank account. Maybe the cost of the boards had gone down since the last time Jim looked into it. Or maybe Sheppard was just an impulsive idiot. But the village had five shiny new surfboards to split up among twenty kids.

It wasn't actually a surprise that the werewolf learned to surf almost on accident. The bigger kids had to wait their turn for the smaller ones to get tired out and then be taken home by the few adults who had come out with them to get the crash course. When it was Stiles' turn, Hale only went out in the water to make sure Stilinski didn't drown. By the time Stiles had fallen off his board twice, his Guide had figured out how to catch a wave. And he kept doing it to goad Stiles into it, so the kid kept trying. It was amusing to watch.

Ellison stayed out of it, mostly tried to not fall on his own face too badly. He tried to move out where he could set a boundary line for the kids and just stay out of trouble. But somebody had to find trouble. It was inevitable.

Stilinski was paddling out with Hale while Sheppard worked with two of the other teens, and Ellison made the mistake of staying on the shore with Sandburg and McKay. The two definitely got along well; they argued enough in that annoying academic-nerd way. Jim was used to it and tuned them out easily as he watched the water. There were a few kids still on the beach, playing at races and building huts out of driftwood as they waited for their turn on the boards, and the older ones went off hunting the driftwood that the younger ones used for materials.

There was a sudden shout from the water as one of the girls out on the water took a flailing belly flop into the wave she had been trying to lean into. The kid came back up a moment later, fine, and swimming to catch the board. But something was wrong because Sheppard was paddling out again, toward Stilinski and Hale. Ellison got up and went out to the water, up to his knees in it to wave the girls back in. The Guides abandoned their post and headed for the water further down toward the others.

By the time Ellison had corralled all the village kids back up on the beach, Sheppard had sent Hale's board up with the tide on its own for Sandburg and McKay to get out of the way. That left two shaky Sentinel and a trainee Guide bobbing out in the water. Hale was in the water, clinging to the side of Stilinski's board, and Sheppard was trying to stay close without getting jostled into either of them.

"Do I need to go out there?" Ellison asked, knowing the two Guides on shore had seen more than he had of the situation. Rodney nodded but Blair held off.

"Stiles is still on the board. Looks like Derek's trying to talk him around," said Blair.

"Which would be easier if they weren't fighting the water," replied Jim. "He might not even register anything past the board."

"Well, I don't suggest anyone yell at them at the moment, we don't know what set him off," Sandburg said.

"What's happened?" asked Orren, one of the older boys that had been shadowing Stiles and Derek since their arrival. The rest of the kids crowded around, pulling Jim's attention with simple proximity. He nudged Sandburg and then stepped out into the water, a hint for the Guide to take care of the closer problem. Blair set to work quieting the kids and McKay waded out into the water further with Jim. A moment later, he realized the man was waving both arms in the air like he was trying to flag down a plane.

"They're a little busy at the moment, McKay. That's not gonna work unless they look up," Ellison pointed out.

"John will," said Rodney, because he apparently had more confidence in his Sentinel than Sheppard seemed to. Jim shook his head and let it go. He was about to head out into the water again when he heard Rodney say " _I told you so_." And looked up from where he was wading to see Hale being helped up onto the back of the board to help paddle back in. Guide and Sentinel were both secure on the board and Sheppard had slipped into the water to push them through the waves that had been keeping them bobbing. After a few more yards, Derek could paddle effectively enough to steer and the water did the rest of the work. Jim swam out to meet them in the middle and help.

A few minutes later they were dragging the board up onto the beach, and Stiles was still latched onto the edges, stuck looking over his shoulder. His eyes were open but his mouth wasn't and he had been propped up off the board on his elbows when he zoned. He was still breathing, though it was shallower in a zone, but it wasn't as bad as the problems Sheppard had. The kid would be okay, now that he wasn't at immediate risk of drowning from a wave surge, Hale just had to snap him out of it. They had definitely pushed too hard for the first day back in an organic environment.

Sheppard and McKay started to work rounding up surfboards and kids to convince them they were done for the day. There were a few complaints, but they all left. And Derek and Blair spent another stressful few minutes trying to find a sense that Stiles hadn't overloaded on. Stilinski eventually came back, coughing for air and collapsing on the board he had latched on to the front end of.

"What the hell!" he managed. He caught sight of Derek and pulled at his arm to help lever himself so he was sitting up. Then, predictably, the kid keeled sideways into Hale's space.

"You zoned, man," said Blair as Stiles figured out how to get coordinated again. "Fifteen minutes, easy."

"It's not a record you wanna break," Derek added.

"But I was in the _water_." Stiles looked as offended as he was concerned.

"Yeah, and you overloaded on it. And you are probably tired. And you've been at this all morning already. The outdoors is hard work when you've spent a month cooped up inside," said Sandburg.

"Do you _understand_... How absolutely _stupid_ that sounds?" Stiles said, complaining and grumpy as he remembered how to breathe.

"Uh huh. You're not allowed around Rodney anymore," replied Sandburg. "You're starting to sound like him."

Sitting up so Stiles could slouch against him, Derek shook his head. "Nope, that was Stiles."

"Lovely," said Jim, stifling a sigh. He left Sandburg to the young team and scooted the surfboard away from where Stiles was still half sprawled on it so he could take it up to the Jumper with the others.

~*~*~

When they got back to the village, Blair was surprised to learn Ronon had gone out hunting with a group of older residents. Sitting at a table on the covered porch of one of the houses, Daniel had stayed behind with Teyla, doing actual _work_ and trading stories with two of the locals, stories that Blair was probably never going to wrangle out of the other anthropologist.

"I thought the whole hunting thing was going to wait a few days?" Sheppard asked, frowning a little as he leaned on the post by the steps.

"The full moon isn't until the end of the week here. So we have time," Daniel replied. He ducked his head a little and made a face at the mess of vegetables he was scrubbing. "I kind of explained my situation when I asked about the cycle. Della said sooner was better then, so Sheppard can have his brine. And she and Treyn and a few others set out to hunt. Hours ago."

Blair went wide-eyed. "Wait... You told them? About the... The shifter thing?"

Daniel nodded. "Not on purpose... but yeah."

"It was fine," said Teyla, walking up between the crowd to deliver more supplies. Stiles picked up one of the curved knives she had brought and Rodney smoothly removed it from his hands and placed it further down the table from him.

"No sharp objects for you until you get your senses straight," he ordered, but he was surprisingly quiet. Blair blinked at their exchange but focused back on Teyla when all Stiles did was glare at Rodney for it.

"I thought you said shifters were just legend for your people?" Blair asked her. "Everyone was fine with the... news?"

Teyla nodded. "The Wraith are legends for us, Blair. Our legends are very real. And like a Guardian, communities with shifters were considered blessed and protected. What makes us different protects our people. It is celebrated here."

"You still got put on KP, though," Stiles observed, grinning about it. Daniel rolled his eyes.

"Helping out is not always KP," he pointed out. "I would like to eat tonight. And for free is a bonus."

"And just to help clarify the difference, KP is what you're gonna be doing in a few hours," said Jim. Blair looked over to see his friend smiling and realized he was actually enjoying the whole team thing again. Stiles' face sparked up in ready protest and Jim shook his head. "After you sleep. Do a reset."

"Okay, first of all, I'm not tired-" Stiles began, only to be called out by a quiet " _Bullshit_." from Derek. Stiles glared at him briefly before looking back to Jim. "Second, I'm not six. You can't tell me to go take a nap."

"You're not six, but you zoned out on a surfboard," Rodney pointed out.

"Don't help!" Stiles backhanded Rodney's shoulder lightly for it, which surprised the man enough that he returned it.

"Oh my God," muttered Blair, rolling his eyes. He pulled Rodney a step away and pointed the scientist's attention to the blurry-eyed Sheppard standing a few feet away. "Both of you. Sleep. Sentinels reset. Now."

Sheppard blinked at him. "What? I didn't do anything- I did _not_ zone!"

"No, but you've both been living in a tin can for actual weeks and the last twenty-four hours of nature can put you close to overload. And if one of you is already there, I'm sure the other isn't far from it, either," said Blair. Jim nodded his agreement, and Blair wasn't oblivious to the fact that the man stood inches from his back, like even he had taken to grounding himself again with his Guide’s help. Blair shoved back on him. "Go. Now."

" _Naptimes_ now? Can we discuss _not_ treating the team like we're five, just, for a minute?" Sheppard asked. At which, Blair nodded and turned to look back at him.

"Sure thing, soon as everybody gets on the same page with not actually acting like they're five," he replied. Blair heard Daniel try to choke back a laugh as he very resolutely kept his attention on food preparation. Teyla looked over at them, arms crossed.

"Maybe next time it would be best not to push yourselves this hard in the first place," she suggested mildly.

"That's the point of the training," said Rodney. "Find the line and know when to back off from it."

"Okay, _fine_ , but naptimes? Really?" Sheppard insisted. Jim looked over at him.

"It's healthier than the comas yesterday afternoon," he replied. John shut his mouth then and took the point. He started to leave, hesitated, and then stepped back to pull on Rodney.

"Fine. Guides share the misery," he said. And, decision made, he towed Rodney off of the covered porch in front of Della's house, with McKay grumbling at him about _nap times_ not being a _required team activity_... But following along anyway. Blair looked to Stiles then, eyebrow raised as the teen stubbornly held his ground in front of the table like he preferred KP to a nap. Derek stood by, smug grin on his face, as he waited to see which fight Stiles picked. Some help the Guides were. Blair was going to have to talk to them about their priorities.

Teyla rolled her eyes at the teen. "It may be helpful to point out that the Colonel and Dr. McKay appear to be headed back toward the beach, not to their sleeping bags, so the common house will be quiet," she said. Blair stepped away from Jim enough to look down the street to see John and Rodney were in fact walking shoulder to shoulder back towards the beach. Not exactly a great place to get away from sensory overload, but it was too late to set ground rules on nap times now.

"And if you sleep now, the festivities will be easier to survive later," Daniel pointed out. He hesitated and looked between Stiles and Derek knowingly. "I mean, actually sleep. Not..." He gestured vaguely toward the direction Sheppard had kidnapped McKay.

"Oh God, don't say that," complained Blair as Stiles suddenly smiled. Daniel looked up at Blair, clueless.

"What? You know he's just going to go back to the water," said Daniel. An utterly naive statement at which Jim and Teyla both started laughing, and Stiles took advantage of. The teen caught Derek by the hand and started walking toward the common house.

“ _Actually_ sleep!” Blair called after them. Jim caught him over the shoulder and kept him from harassing the pair further. Blair caught his arm where it rested over his collar and leaned back. “You’re not much better.”

“Nope, but I’ll sleep on this porch before I go back to my bedroll now,”

“Oh,” said Daniel, suddenly catching on. “Yeah. Good plan.”

Casually pinned as he was, Blair couldn't get a visual check on his Sentinel, so he rested his back to Jim's chest and listened, tuned in to how his friend worked after so many years. "What do we need to do about you then?"

Teyla looked them over and then disappeared into the house. She came out a moment later, waving her hand. "Captain, this way."

"No, Teyla, really-" began Jim, shaking his head. He let go of Blair to stand on his own and prove he was fine, but the Athosian would not be put off. Karma for bossing the other two, Blair figured. He pushed at Jim's shoulder then and saw him into the home. He wanted the excuse to snoop anyway.

Inside he was treated to a whole new view of the Molanbe culture, with the weaving stands and the tapestry on the walls and the furniture that blended woods and fabrics. Jim was offered a couch of their design and it looked like pillows layered in a sturdy frame and buried in blankets. He sat down and sank in, seeming predictably uncomfortable about it as he took up most of it. He looked up at Blair.

"Guide's optional on this one, Chief. Just... Maybe don't wander off too far. I'm trying to keep the sound down."

Blair squeezed his shoulder and nodded. He looked up to Teyla. "Anything I can help with from the porch?"

So Teyla shuffled some of the helping hands around and made room for Blair, and he was handed a knife and a few baskets so he could spend the next few hours prepping funny colored vegetables and squashes for the impromptu community celebration still just a few hours off. And he and Daniel pinged back and forth with the locals with questions and stories, and sat on an alien planet in an alien galaxy and prepared food, like humans.

It was a thousand miles in the opposite direction from the reality where Blair had been a passenger on actual spaceships, and explored a floating city-ship with technology that could read Sentinels’ minds. In another lifetime, even when he had gone to villages to work with tribes through the university, he was rarely allowed to help with a meal or any other important preparation; outsiders weren't quite _that_ welcome. Here, though, in a whole different galaxy, as a friend to family of their host, he was let in. Incidentally, he sat next to a werewolf the whole time. There was nothing predictable or academic about Blair's life anymore, but it had definitely gone up a few levels in _awesome_.

A few hours later, the food was cooked and people were lining up as the sun sank lower. The moon hung fairly low and bright over a still pale sky, but it wasn't yet full, and the second moon was still just a crystal crescent. Daniel seemed to breathe a little easier when he saw them both clearly, with neither one full.

"You'll feel it coming before you see it," Derek pointed out, and Daniel nodded.

"Sure," he said, "But the visual confirmation is nice."

Blair definitely appreciated it. He trusted his team, he was just a little shaky on the werewolf thing still, and that was mostly because Daniel was still uncertain. The guy didn't exactly exude confidence, not that Blair could blame him for it. But still, it showed. Daniel even skipped the jugs of winter brine, in stark contrast to John. The Lt. Colonel probably would have taken one of the jugs back to his seat with him if it wouldn't have been impolite to their hosts. But he brought a mug for himself and a mug for Rodney, and didn't seem overly surprised when Rodney declined and both mugs became John's.

"I can't tell if this is budding alcoholism or just a rebellion," Blair said, taunting as the contents of one of the mugs disappeared. John glanced over at him and shrugged, unconcerned.

"This is off the leash for the first time in months," replied John. He thumbed at Rodney. "This jerk ruined the last buzz I had. I'm calling a do-over and planning on sleeping in."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "It was your own fault."

"Yeah, well, do it again and all previously accrued debts are canceled, that's all I'm saying," John said. Blair laughed as Jim shook his head.

"You might take it easy, boss. Just until you know how that stuff is going to hit," he said. That caught both teams' attention, and Stiles looked rather guilty as he lowered his own mug.

"I've had it before..." John began. Rodney deftly tugged the cup out of Sheppard's hand.

"That was before Datura," he pointed out. John stared at him, jaw slack, eyes narrowed.

"You did not just-" John stopped suddenly and blinked up at Rodney, where he sat on the log-bench that Sheppard reclined against. "Okay. Yeah. You hang on to that."

"What?" Stiles asked. Sheppard looked over at him, still squinting.

"That was my third mug," John said. "I... Think I need to eat faster."

"Oh my God, if you get sick, don't expect me to clean it up," said Rodney. John shoved at his leg with his shoulder for it.

"I didn't say I was gonna be sick," he defended, the confidence in the assessment trailing off at the end. "I said my vision went a little funny colored."

On the bench on the other side, Blair sat up and tugged at Sheppard's shoulder. "You did _not_ actually say that..."

Jim reached across the both of them to catch Rodney's attention. "Give me that, will ya?"

Rodney passed the mug over John's head and the man was thoroughly offended at the betrayal. Blair looked over at Jim. "Is he just a lightweight or what? You had some-"

"Well, yeah, but I'm barely half through my first round, and this is his third," Jim replied. He sniffed at the mug and then at his own. "They smell the same "

"I'm fine, I just haven't had anything to eat since breakfast, so it hit harder," said John. He reached for the mug and reclaimed it. "I'll eat and try again later."

"Define _funny_ colored vision," replied Rodney. John stared at the fire pit in front of them.

"Well. Uh. The fire has some green in it. And I think purple, but I really don't think I've ever _seen_ that color before, so it's not really purple, and I'm still trying to figure this out exactly."

Blair looked across at Stiles, who very quickly emptied his own mug. Because _that_ was brilliant. "Okay, how much have _you_ had?" Blair asked him. Stiles handed Derek the mug so it was no longer a temptation, now that it was _empty_.

"Just that one," he reported. "And I will so totally let you know when I start seeing funny colors."

"You're an idiot," Derek informed him, about as amused by Stiles' trick as Rodney seemed to be with John just then. Stiles grinned at him, smug, and shoved some squash in his mouth just to prove he was eating food like Sheppard's scheme outlined. Blair glanced over at Jim. The Sentinel handed his half full mug to him.

"I'm going to let you have my ration, Chief," he decided. Blair nodded. Beside him, Rodney was prodding at Sheppard and reminding him to eat food and not just stare at the fire. The Lt. Colonel shook himself out of what had to have been the start of a zone. The contents of Rodney's plate were dumped onto John's as the man started poking at figuring out how to eat.

"What the hell-" Sheppard complained. Rodney stood up.

"You didn't get enough food. Eat. All of that," he said. He looked to Blair. "Please keep the idiot from crawling into the fire. I'll be right back."

"I'm not high, Rodney," John called after him as he left for the food tables.

"Just for the record, if I don't get _not_ -high like that, I'm going to be pissed," Stiles said, and he probably meant it to only be loud enough for Derek, but the kid was still shit at his volume control and even Blair heard him. Sandburg put his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands.

"We're safe here, Sandburg," Jim pointed out beside him. "Like the man said the other day, might as well get this stuff over with. While they've still got their training wheels on."

Sheppard cracked up laughing at that and _vroooomed_ at the piece of steak-like-stuff he shoveled into his mouth. That, of course, was when Teyla, Ronon, and Daniel returned from visiting with Della and Treyn.

"What the hell was that?" Ronon wanted to know. Sheppard looked up at him.

"Woah. Why-" The man seemed a little actually alarmed that time. "Uh. Sandburg?"

"Over here," Blair said helpfully, because Sheppard was still staring across the fire at Ronon. John nodded.

"Yeah, I know. But... I don't think _this-_ I think I might be having a reaction to the brine. Is what I'm getting at..."

"Ya _think_?" Blair replied. "Really?"

"What's happened?" Teyla asked.

"Is seeing auras a thing? Or is the fire dancing funny?" John said, not actually replying to Teyla but answering her question all the same.

"Yes, seeing auras is a thing," Blair said, shoving back a sigh. This was going to be a long night.

"No shit, really?" Stiles said. Blair looked over at Jim.

"I swear to God I'm gonna kill 'em both if they survive this," he said. Jim patted his shoulder with mock sympathy.

"They'll be fine," he assured him. But the annoying thing was that none of them knew that, and there was only one way to find out, and for now the _second_ time in actual years, Blair didn't feel like he knew what to expect from a sensory episode. They were on another _planet_ , in another _galaxy_. The rules had to be different somehow, and Blair didn't know what or how.

"What colors are you seeing, John?" asked Jim, and Blair smacked his arm for encouraging him.

"Reds. Oranges. I don't know four of these colors," said John. "Teyla's blue and white. I swear to anything you want me to, guys, I am _not_ high..."

"What about Derek? I don't see anything," said Stiles, still disappointed about not being high.

"There's a fire in the way," John pointed out. Then he shrugged and bobbed to the side. "Greens. And black. Buddy, that can't be healthy. Teyla, can you-"

Blair was mildly surprised that John really was seeing auras, but he still tugged John's shirt sleeve to make him sit upright again. "Yes, there's some black. But he's okay. We'll work on the aura thing later."

"How do you know? You can see?"

"Sometimes, yes. And green and black isn't bad. He's not always green and black, sometimes there's some blue and gold in there," Blair said.

"You are supposed to be eating," Rodney reminded John as he showed up again. He sat down with more food of his own and the mugs were gone and away from Sheppard's temptation. Instead, he had brought back their canteens.

"I'm eating," John defended, very much not actually putting food in his face. He looked up at Rodney and then nearly dropped his plate. "Holy shit."

"What?" Rodney asked, confused. John nearly dropped his plate _again_ as he reached up toward his Guide, and Blair thankfully caught it, shooting a glare over at Jim for snickering at it. When he looked back, John was running his thumb over Rodney's face.

"You have stripes."

"Is this an aura thing?" Rodney asked. Blair made a mental note to tell him John was just seeing on a different light spectrum, later, when the Guide didn't look stressed and snappy.

"No! Stripes," said John.

"Okay... You can say you're not high all you want, but you're so very wrong," Rodney informed him. John scowled at him and then drew back to himself. He looked around, down at his hands, then at the fire.

"Where'd my plate go?" he asked. Blair handed it over, right in front of his nose so he definitely wouldn't miss it. John seemed happy enough to take it back and start eating. "Oh. Right."

~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _______________________________
> 
> Hi! Just wanted to drop a quick apology in here. A friend brought it to my attention that John calling Rodney by "Mer" is triggering for many people. I was completely unaware that it could be read as deadnaming and it was not my intention to include something at all harmful. So I wanted to say I'm sorry to anyone who was hurt by that. 
> 
> It is part of the story at this point, however, so I'm looking into ideas to clarify and correct the context for the use of the pet name going forward. <3
> 
> ~Note


	7. Chapter 7

As promised, Stiles let them know when he started seeing funny colors. He wasn't built the same as the Colonel, so when the sweet brine hit him about fifteen minutes later, Stiles wavered a little, like he was going to fall over, just because he turned to look at Derek. His pupils were blown and his cheeks were a little more pink than usual, but just as with Sheppard, he looked otherwise normal. But he blinked at Derek like he couldn't focus.

"Woah. Dude. You have lines," Stiles said, sounding stunned.

"Stripes?" Derek asked, because Sandburg had already explained the dermal color variations Sheppard had tried pointing out to them. But Stiles shook his head. He reached out a hand and his fingers stopped a few inches from Derek's face, weaving a little like he was playing with strings. 

"Lines. They move. Out here. Like... Like... Smoke. This is weird, man," he said. He kept trying to interrupt the smoke and traced his fingers up and around Derek's face and over his head, poking into his hair on accident and then shaking himself out of it. Derek looked over at Blair to ask something but he was quickly derailed by Stiles startling and falling off his seat on the bench beside him. "Holy crap!"

Derek tried to catch him and Stiles hung onto his wrist, but he seemed pretty sturdy for someone having a weird trip.

"What was that?" Daniel asked, sitting on the other side of Stiles and holding his drink carefully away to avoid anyone wearing it. 

"Wolf. That's the smoke. Wolf. Long nose. Not flat nose. Holy crap," Stiles replied. He tried again to touch the smoke only he could see but seemed disappointed. Derek frowned at him.

"Pretty sure you're high," he said. 

"Nope," said Sheppard across the fire. "I told you. It’s there if we both see it."

"Auras don't have shapes though..." Stiles pointed out. He looked over at Blair. "Right?"

Blair looked surprised but he nodded. "Right... _but_ he’s a shifter..."

“Looked at Daniel lately?” returned Sheppard, and Stiles leaned into Derek’s space to turn to stare wide-eyed at Daniel, who looked very much like he didn’t appreciate the call-out. Stiles swore under his breath and almost tried to mess with whatever he was watching around Daniel but Derek pulled his hand back in to save Jackson the embarrassment.

"Hey, Chief..." Ellison said, slowly. "Maybe I should..."

Blair didn't hesitate and handed the mug with the winter brine back to the Sentinel. "We have officially moved into lab rat territory, boys,” he said. He nudged Jim with his elbow. “Drink up."

"Hey! That was not the plan," Sheppard said. "I may be seeing things but this is not buzzed enough to not understand what _lab rat_ means."

"I don't think walking anywhere is such a great idea if their vision is distorted," Daniel pointed out, and Derek nodded quick agreement. 

Stiles tried to insist he would be fine to walk, but Derek caught his arm and kept him close with a quiet _‘Nope_.’ And so Stiles sat where he was told, and he and Sheppard answered questions about their wonky vision without moving from their cozy dugout around the fire pit. Daniel and Blair tag teamed on asking questions, and Rodney mostly listened, strangely focused for someone who was usually too irritated to care about other people’s oddities. 

Ronon laughed from his corner, smug and apparently impervious to whatever was triggering the sensory episode for the other Sentinel. They had no way to confirm genetically that Ronon was a Sentinel, but he could keep up with Ellison’s senses, and Sandburg defaulted to Ronon’s abilities as a comparison point for the other two in training on the ship. But the Molanbe’s winter brine wasn’t seeming to influence him at all. When the next stage hit the Colonel and his volume control slipped and his words slurred, Ronon pointed it out and laughed just to rile him. Sheppard started to stand up to challenge his friend for it, got dizzy, and sat himself down before Rodney could argue him on it.

“This isn’t fair,” Sheppard muttered.

“This is freakin’ cool,” replied Stiles.

"Any idea how long they're stuck with this?" Derek asked. Stiles leaned into him, fine with being pinned to his side, and started pulling at a string his fingers targeted in Derek's jeans at his knee. For someone who supposedly wasn't high, he had just hyper-focused on something tiny, like a cat on catnip, and he was determined to turn the loose string into a hole. 

"No idea. This is... literally alien to their system." Blair shook his head. "Longer than twelve hours and we get them back to Carson, though."

"Oh, great," said Rodney. "What's the Jumper going to do with the pilot half gone?"

"I'm right _here_ ," John said, dismissive of the concern. "Should definitely _not_ fly any time soon, though. Rodney can." 

"We'll be fine," Jim reminded them. He had hit the funny-colors stage fifteen minutes earlier and was much quieter about it than the other two. "This is nothing too weird. It's just... A new spectrum, I'll give you that."

It was obvious though that Ellison wasn’t leading the way on the Sentinels’ new experiences this time. He was well behind Stiles and couldn’t warn them when the new visual spectrum turned into the pins and needles that seemed to start crawling along Stiles’ skin. Derek had his own frame of reference for that as Stiles tried to explain, but it was impossible for Stiles to shift; he wasn’t a werewolf, so Derek couldn’t talk him through dealing with it like he could for Daniel. Stiles reached for his jacket to try to make the air stop making it worse.

“Dial it down,” said Derek. He held his hand palm-up on Stiles’ knee to offer touch that wasn’t filtered, and Stiles folded his fingers between and latched on.

“Tried that. An’ if anyth-ing goes lower, it’th off-ff,” said Stiles, stumbling over words the same way Sheppard had been for half an hour. It was a coordination thing, the Colonel had said. He had told Blair that he couldn’t get his hearing to balance out and touch was spiking at random, which messed with the way words felt in his mouth. They had been drinking water until that happened. Then it wasn’t a great idea because of the risk of zone outs by layering up the sensory input, not to mention the risk of choking. 

“It’s not a _bad_ trip, it’s just a trip,” said Ellison, not quite at the point the other two were.

“Definitely not how things were supposed to have gone,” said Daniel. “I’m not sure who to feel worse for, you guys or the village.”

Teyla and Ronon had been running interference with the Molanbe since Stiles had started showing signs of feeling the impact from the brine. The music and dance and general socialization that had been planned for quietly just never happened once the sun went down. The community collected their meals and then disappeared into their homes, leaving the Guardians around one of the lit fire pits as most of the others were allowed to burn down. And Derek had spent an hour chopping firewood for them that afternoon, too. 

Walking was out of the question, so Sheppard had curled onto his side, ducked his shoulder against McKay, and knees into his gut, and seemed to be unsuccessfully intent on trying to sleep it off. That didn't seem to be an option for Stiles, either. 

"What senses _aren't_... spiking?" McKay asked, quiet. Sheppard shook his head.

"All'em," he said, squinting. "And then sthome."

"And _then-_ what's _that_ supposed to mean?" Rodney asked. Daniel seemed to take interest in that. 

"Well, there's the usual five senses that we experience," said Daniel. "And then there's..."

He left the statement to hang there and Sheppard nodded. Derek looked to Stiles. "What, like ghosts?"

"Energy," Blair corrected, glancing over at Rodney before the scientist could start in on a lecture about the impossibility of ghosts. "Their senses can perceive energy at different levels and right now, yeah, it would make sense if they're picking up on _ghosts_. Maybe smells that aren't actually there, trigger memories, produce sensations, and suddenly there's a ghost. Maybe see them, maybe hear them..."

"I get goddum birds. Sounds like a raph-en. Stuck in a synph-eth-ipher," Sheppard replied, nodding. Derek winced as his volume went up too high as he stumbled to get his tongue around words without opening his mouth. Stiles held Derek's hand over his ear rather than let go.

"A raven... Stuck in a synthesizer?" Daniel asked, trying to translate. Sheppard gave a thumbs up rather than answer. 

"It's night. No birds," said Rodney. "So insanity isn't off the table."

Sheppard backhanded the man in the gut from right up close and McKay shrugged it off. 

"Wolves," said Ellison. He held up his hand enough to show two fingers. "Two. Blair's an' Der-ks."

Stiles uncurled at that, looked over at Blair. "What?"

"Oh shit, really?" Blair asked at the same time, looking at Jim. The Sentinel nodded.

"Looks the same," said Ellison. He pointed to Derek. "Wolf's his."

"We, uh... We already know that," said Daniel, in that careful tone that implied he thought Ellison had finally tipped over into high. But Ellison hadn't gotten more than giggly, so far, and even Stiles and Sheppard had sobered up once things got really weird on them. Ellison shook his head. Then he pointed past Blair and John at Rodney.

"Ra-ven."

"What is he getting at?" Ronon asked, looking to Blair for the translation.

"Oh boy." Blair seemed surprised.

"What wolves?" insisted Ronon. "There's walls here. Fires. If wolves are coming in, we got problems."

"Not that kind," said Blair, shaking his head.

"Wasn't there a metaphysical chapter in your original thesis?" Daniel asked suddenly. Ronon growled at him for changing the subject, but Blair just nodded.

"It kindof got cut from the Project's copy," said Blair. "It wasn't something we could consistently explore with the Sentinel brought in. And Glass didn't want me talking about it."

"What about it?" asked Derek. 

"How does anything metaphysical help with winter brine poisoning?" Rodney cut in. 

"S'not poison," said Sheppard. "Jus' my luck."

"It's relevant. Rodney, you're gonna have to trust us on this one," said Blair. Sheppard smacked at Rodney again, still tucked in tight against him.

"He means shuttup."

"Do you see wolves, John? Is that what you meant, about the more senses thing?" Blair asked. John nodded and pointed at the ground in front of Stiles and Derek. Then he pointed at the ground two feet away from him, in front of Blair and Jim. 

"Stiles?" Blair asked.

Stiles nodded against Derek's shoulder and pointed without looking toward the ground in front of Ronon. Ellison leaned slightly to see around the fire pit and Sandburg latched onto his shoulder to make sure he didn't fall over for the effort. The Sentinel's eyebrows climbed up. 

"Coyote," Jim reported. And Stiles nodded again. 

"So... We're missing some," said Blair.

"Some _what_?" asked Derek. He had been paying attention but somehow felt more confused than he did a few minutes ago. "You're saying they're actually seeing animals that aren't there?"

"What the _hell-_ " added Rodney as Sheppard again pointed and said "They're right _there_."

"Maybe it's a conversation for when everyone is... Sober," said Blair.

"Excuse me? _We're_ sober. They're... High," replied Rodney. "And I'm a little worried about you if you're suggesting there are invisible animals here."

"It's an area where we have theories and no answers, Rodney," said Blair. "And for now, accept that there _are_ invisible animals present."

"Invisible wolves," clarified Derek, because he was not at all missing the inexplicable significance of people he had started to see as pack now suddenly seeing invisible wolves. 

"Spirit guides," said Blair, like it had to be dragged out of him by the invisible animals in question. "They're... Another grounding point for Sentinel. It's one of the areas I have only anecdotal evidence gathered. Not every team has them, or knows they have them, or shares that knowledge with the Project because there is this stigma that it is religious voodoo and only the insane see things that aren't there."

The final point caused Rodney to shut his mouth.

"Not every team will be from the same religious background," said Daniel, trying to puzzle it out the same as everyone else. "And Spirit Guides are very cultural. Shamanic beliefs-"

"Multiple cultures and religious systems have a form of spirit animal, so shamanic practice isn't required, necessarily," said Blair. "From what evidence I did have, the animal Guides are Messengers. Nobody has to _believe_ in them for them to show up anyway. They tend to show up when a team is separated. There's been instances where a team shared an experience of an event even though they were physically on another continent. They all mention the animals, somehow, as either present or as the direct... I don't know, direct facilitator of the connection. I'm pretty sure ours managed to save my life, once. And I have no scientific explanation for that."

"But they really see things? Derek asked. "So they see _my_ wolf."

"Yep," said three Sentinel at once. Derek stared at Stiles, wide-eyed. By now, Stiles knew full well what Derek looked like in four-legged form. But the others had only seen him shifted twice. So while the others might confuse any old black wolf, Stiles wouldn't.

"So... If Jim is seeing my wolf, and Derek's wolf. Those are the Guides' animals. A coyote protecting Ronon right now... My guess is that's Teyla. And a raven yelling at John sounds like it would be Rodney," said Blair.

"Look, I'm _trying_ not to yell," replied Rodney, mildly defensive about it.

"Raven isn't," said John.

"Which leaves the Sentinel guides unaccounted for," Blair concluded, ignoring the Colonels. "So I guess if somebody sees a black panther wander in, let me know."

"What's a pann-ther?" Ronon asked.

"Big black cat with dark spots. Jungle cat. Big as a wolf," said Daniel.

"We have those. On Sateda. Come in other colors, though. Gray and yellow and brown," Ronon replied, looking around the ground surrounding the fire pit.

"I thought you couldn't see them?" Derek asked. Ronon shook his head.

"Can't."

"It's something you could work up to. Work on meditation with Teyla, you might get there," said Blair. He looked over at Stiles and then down at John. "As much as this sucks for you two, I'm actually kinda glad it did. This opens up a whole new area for training."

"Not a lab rat," Sheppard reminded him. He uncurled from his huddle against Rodney's side enough to aim a middle finger in Blair's direction. So much for that whole _acting their age_ plan.

" _Training_ ," Blair repeated at him, dragging the word out. There was a small sound, Blair probably missed it, but Derek heard the laugh as John kept his back to the Captain's Guide. The Lt. Colonel was still half strung out and tugging at Sandburg's pigtails. Derek hid a smile at it by pressing a kiss to the top of Stiles' head. He thought he caught movement out the corner of his eye, behind the log bench he and Stiles leaned against. The flick of a red and black bushy tail. But he didn't see anything there when he looked directly at where he had seen the movement.

Stiles started laughing and drew Derek's attention back to the circle of light around the fire pit.

"What?" he asked, quiet. Stiles pointed at Sheppard without lifting his hand from the hole he was still trying to tear in Derek's pants. 

"Colonel pithed off the raven," he said. And John kept ducking his head closer to Rodney's shoulder and randomly lifting his arm to wave over his head, confusing the hell out of McKay who had to dodge to avoid getting accidentally hit. Sheppard finally tried sitting up on his own and scooting away from the bench. He wavered and leaned on his knees but kept plenty of space between himself and the raised platform behind Rodney.

"What-" McKay asked, very obviously confused. The Sentinel sitting so close to the fire pit to get away from something the Guides couldn't see was an obvious point of concern, but Stiles thought it was hilarious. Derek really wished he could see it. 

Daniel and Teyla eventually trekked back to the commonhouse and brought back the sleeping bags for the others to camp out under the stars. It wasn’t terrible, and the soft packed dirt around the fire pits was a lot softer than the hardwood floors, but Rodney had complaints about it. 

“Mer. Mer. _Mer_. Mer-” was the only way Sheppard had to shut him up, and it eventually worked. Everybody staked out their own corners of the wide dug-out fire seating areas that wrapped around the back half of the village. It was a social area, an open space kept clear for celebrations and dancing, but it was no accident that they had built a ready trough for fire between the village and the stargate. So each Sentinel team ended up with their own fire to keep going and nobody crowding the spaced out Sentinel. Ronon, Teyla, and Daniel had absolutely no reason not to walk back to the common house and slept indoors. 

It was another hour before Stiles was finally able to sleep off the overall buzzy sensory spikes. The last thing he said before he passed out was that the wolf by Ellison was still blue, even though Ellison was over twenty feet away at one of the other fire pits by then, and Derek still couldn’t see any wolves. When Stiles curled up asleep in his sleeping bag, though, Derek’s curiosity was still scratching at the back of his brain. So he climbed in his own sleeping bag, made sure things were comfortable enough, and then walked out of it as a big black wolf that there was no way anyone could pretend they couldn’t see.

He almost missed the small furry body curled up behind Stiles’ sleeping bag. But it lifted it’s head and set a long pointed nose on Stiles’ feet to stare at Derek, and he saw the ears twitch in his peripheral. Derek swung his head over to look and this time the shadow of movement looked real, looked almost solid. A red and black fox watched him, slouched easily into the space between Stiles’ sleeping bag and the log bench boundary of the dug out. The ears were alert and the eyes unnaturally bright as they tracked Derek.

Padding right up to it, the fox lifted its face and sniffed at him but didn’t run. It yipped and barked, but it didn’t sound... natural. There was an echo to it, something unreal. The dark ears went loose and the fox darted up over Stiles’ legs to nip at Derek’s muzzle, then rolled against his legs and down onto his paws, belly up and black skinny feet shoving air up at Derek’s face. The thing had no scent, which set Derek’s hackles up, and he caught it by the neck, careful but trying to get _something_ familiar out of what looked like a glowing animal. The fox licked his face and caught his nose between both paws, a squeaking sort of purr rumbling out. 

And Derek realized that somehow he hadn’t got his mouth around something solid. It felt like biting down on a jet stream of water that he couldn’t just snap his way through. Because he couldn’t make sense of it, he didn’t try. He let it go and the fox jumped up like a puppy, bounded around, and the sharp fore paws pounced off his shoulder as the fox zoomed in and out and around the fire. Confused and not sure what to make of it, Derek turned his back on it and headed for Sandburg and Ellison. The fox, of course, followed, and trotted along easily beside him.

Blair was sitting up, awake and alert enough even though he absolutely ruined his night vision by staring at the fire. He was talking, quiet, and Ellison was sprawled out in the sleeping bag beside him, laying down to dodge the vertigo of wonky senses. They both looked over as Derek walked around the fire to take a headcount. And the fox wove around his feet and walked up to the white and gray wolf that looked no more real than the fox, sniffing and nosing and disturbing the unreal animal that lounged against Jim’s legs. It was warped and glowy the same way as the fox, but it was there, and a wolf. It didn’t look blue, but it looked like a wolf.

Derek still couldn’t smell the thing. It wavered like a trick of the light, even though he stared right at it. He _woofed_ at it but it didn’t make noise back. The fox yiped at the wolf and bounded right and left, a challenge to play, and the wolf stared back. The gray and white wolf seemed about as excited by the fox’s energy as Derek did, which made for an odd feeling of kinship. But the wolf laid its head down and set the fox on ignore. 

Derek caught the fox by the back of the neck and carefully dragged it up to Blair. It wasn’t small by any means, nearly as long as Derek from nose to tail tip, but it wasn’t real so moving it wasn’t hard. And he set the fox in the Guide’s lap to await an explanation. Blair seemed to freeze up like he had just dumped cold water on him.

“Derek-”

“It’s a fox,” said Ellison. “He jus’ gave you a fox.”

The fox sat on Blair’s feet and curled its tail around its paws as it stared nose to nose at Blair. The Guide closed his eyes and did some meditative breathing thing that Derek was still bad about learning more than enough to boss Stiles about it. A moment later he opened his eyes. The fox barked at him and Blair jumped like he heard the obnoxious noise. That startled the fox and off he went. But it seemed to make sense to Derek then. The whole spirit animal thing wasn’t just the Sentinel being high. Whatever the fox was, it was Stiles’ guardian. So Derek chased after it.

He jumped up out of the dug out over the log bench sides and followed the glowing fox out toward the wall that protected the village. It was lined in old trees and the fox bounded up on a trunk like he intended to run right up into the branches and then stopped, nose pointing up and claws locked in the bark. It yipped up at the boughs overhead and the stupid fluffy red tail wagged, making Derek very self conscious about his own. He sat a few feet behind the fox, _woofed_ at him for attention, and got nothing more than an ear twitch for it. 

Then a black mass of feathers divebombed and attacked the fox’s tail to startle him up and around in an impressive bit of acrobatics to land once again on four feet and facing the completely opposite direction from the tree. The raven swooped up into the branches and the fox stalked in to sit on Derek’s front feet. 

Derek looked up at the tree and saw the raven. It pounced sideways on a branch, eyeing the fox. Then it turned and hopped up another layer to a big brown eagle that sat looking off toward the stargate. The fox yipped and the raven pounced aggressively sideways on its branch, but it didn’t divebomb again. Both the eagle and the raven had the same glow to them as the fox and the gray wolf. 

A high-pitched whistle, just as warped as the fox’s noises, caught Derek’s attention and he looked toward the ‘gate the eagle seemed so intent on. The wall was eight foot tall and solid wood logs, so the best he could see was more trees. And the large black jaguar crouched on a branch. Glowing to emphasize his dark spots in the shiny coat. A different whistle let up from the other way and Derek looked over to see a small tan and brown canine that looked something like a rough coyote, with rounder features and longer coat, trotting his direction, accompanied by a brown and black cat the size of the jaguar. It had shaggier fur and pronounced fangs, like a throwback to the sabertooth that came from a long line of tigers. The cat's stripes were broken up with spots and accented by the glowing surreal light. 

Derek stayed where he was, with the fox on his paws, and watched the two mismatched partners plod up to them. The coyote shoved her shoulder against Derek’s as she passed, and easily bowled the fox over with a head-butt, and the sabercat hopped and body-checked Derek with a surprisingly solid force. Enough that he stumbled and the fox ran in a circle around him as he recovered. Then it was right back on his paws. The coyote sat a few feet away, pointing at the stargate the same as the others did. The big cat pounced, claws caught the wood, and then jumped into the trees with the jaguar. 

Derek shuffled uncertainly, confused by the day. He wasn’t entirely certain that this wasn’t some weird leftover from drinking alien moonshine. The fox jumped up and headbutted him against the underside of his jaw. He hadn’t made any noise since the last threat from the raven, and he still crowded Derek’s space. The others were apparently keeping watch. Not trusting his own senses just then was a completely unnatural feeling because Derek trusted his wolf. But he suddenly didn’t quite have a handle on what he was surrounded by. 

The coyote moved back to him and ducked her head to his shoulder, pushing him just enough, just back to the fires. Back toward where he had left Stiles on his own. Derek took the hint and got to his feet to run back. The fox chirped and kept up easily, charged ahead and then slowed to wait. They hadn’t gone far, and when they returned to Stiles, the fox hopped easily back into its former spot, between Stiles’ legs and the log-wall of the dugout. After checking that his Sentinel still smelled healthy and slept soundly, Derek nosed his way back into his sleeping bag before shifting and getting dressed respectably enough. It was hours since the village had quieted but he didn’t want to risk any kind of cultural problem, no matter how chill the Molanbe said they were with shifters. 

Then he moved his sleeping bag closer to Stiles’ and settled in, taking up some of his space so he could feel his friend’s breathing. He couldn’t see the fox anymore, but he swore he could still hear the high pitched, yipping whine.

~*~*~


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beta came out of hiding to beta things!! So I can post things!! YAY!! And this fic is now mostly written, outline says I have three chapters left to write. XD Here's hoping the muses stick to the outline this time...
> 
> _______________

He was choosing to blame it on John. It was a running theme since they had made it back to Pegasus, and Rodney saw no reason why this should be any kind of exception to the new team policy. The winter brine had been John's idea, anyway. And that was after a day when they had all been tired from the start, pushing and testing from the minute they had been woken up by Sheppard's tiny pack of pipsqueak surfers. The nap in the middle of the afternoon wasn't long enough to recover from all the sun and the wind and the noise. Rodney wasn't a Sentinel, his senses were normal and it had been a lot for him, so what exactly was John thinking, when they were supposed to be on _vacation_.

Well, sort of. Training, technically. The vacation was a loophole that Rodney could have looked forward to after the last few months. If he was going to be kicked out of the city again, when it wasn’t even his fault, then he would try to enjoy it... as much as he could enjoy being stuck out of doors and around children... and the whole thing was really poorly planned. Apparently he was better at identifying loopholes than he was at securing them, because there he was, on his _vacation_ , still working and worrying, as John Sheppard got high as a kite and kept tracing the patterns only he could see on his or Rodney's arms. Sometimes on Rodney's face at random until Rodney talked him in to laying down, thus removing his face from within easy reach.

On some level, it was amusing. It _was_ fun, watching John have fun at something for a little while and then start making faces at it when the fun wore off. Ellison was right, they were safe with Teyla's family and they'd had the brine before so it wasn't going to kill them now. It somehow interacted with John's senses in a whole new way than it had before, though, because John had been drunk a few months earlier but he hadn't been _high_. Even if it was a _sensory_ high rather than a _psychological_ one. (The jerk could quote pi to twenty decimals. Rodney had asked him, twice.)

There was also a small amount of satisfaction in the expectation that John would inevitably wake up with a hangover. Rodney was his own brand of petty and fully planned to wake the man up with a plate of alien scrambled eggs in hand as he interrogated him about the previously unnamed color spectrum. It had been weeks since John had pulled that on him and revenge would be sweet. Assuming the brine didn’t do more than give him a hangover like it had before, which was something Rodney worried uselessly about not knowing the answer to.

In the meantime, they had turned two sleeping bags into one, and John had burrowed in against his chest. He kept his face right at Rodney's neck, with a scruffy chin scratching over his collar bone with every breath. Before he fell asleep, he had accented the scratching with open kisses and tiny licks, but John was just trying to get his senses leveled out, not fool around. Unfortunately. He wasn't sober enough to start anything, for one, and there were some things that shouldn't be done in public, especially not around other Sentinel, not to mention an entire village.

Which was all something _else_ Rodney chose to blame John for just then, because if he hadn't put half the team in a _coma_ , they would have been just fine breaking in their new bed in peace. Not curled up in sleeping bags, on the dirt, outside, surrounded by alien bugs, without so much as their tents.

Rodney fell asleep mentally chiding his friend for everything he could think of, just because it was an outlet to channel his worry into. He made a mental list of what to cover in the morning and made sure it was long enough to put himself to sleep.

When sleep did finally settle in, Rodney didn't notice at first. He saw a fox jump down over the log bench and poke a nose at the top of John's head. Not exactly something he witnessed every day... and did foxes bite? Rodney figured it was a risk; they were in the canine family, they had teeth. He waved a hand to shoo the animal away before he realized the fox had an unnatural glow to the red and black coat. Unless he had drunk too much of the brine himself, which he hadn't, then Rodney was dreaming.

It was a very vivid dream, and he startled when the John still curled up in his arms raised a hand to catch Rodney's away from shooing at the fox.

"Leave off," muttered John. "It's Stiles' buddy."

"What?" Rodney asked the dream-John. The fox poked at Rodney with it's weird pointy noise that time. He propped himself up on an elbow to have a stare-down with the dream-beast. It yipped at him and then made a repetitive sound like a laugh. The high-pitched canine voice was oddly warped and reverbed a little. John rolled to his stomach to lean on his elbows and reached out to touch the fox, because he apparently liked to be bit. But the animal bounced sideways and then back, then up onto the log bench behind Rodney and disappeared.

"Come on," John said quickly, shoving out of the sleeping bag. Rodney scrambled to follow. It was definitely a dream, because they both already had their boots on, and John was in the familiar dark uniform, not the board shorts and button-down shirt he had been in all day. They followed the fox through the open field and spot-gardens behind the village, back to the wall. Teyla stood there, looking like herself, and she turned to smile at their approach.

"John. Rodney," she greeted.

"Hey," added Ronon's voice, and Rodney looked up to see the Satedan sitting on the wall in a space between trees. John took a running start and launched himself up to climb up the fence and join him.

"What's going on?" Rodney asked. He was smart enough to wait with Teyla, not even tempted to climb a wall in a dream.

"They wanted to show us something," said Teyla.

"They?" Rodney looked around, not seeing anyone else.

"Mer, look!" John pulled his attention to where he straddled the wall. A big black bird stood in front of him, staring at him, dancing. John again tried to touch the animal, and this one let him ruffle the feathers on top of it's head. The raven bounced even closer to help. John grinned at it. Then he looked down at Rodney. "This guy's yours."

"What? How do you figure-"

John shrugged. "He bitches at me like nothing else. Got pissed off at me for sassing Blair earlier."

"Well, you were being a jerk when you were high," Rodney said, unconsciously defending a random bird.

"I wasn't _high_ , Rodney!"

The argument got his finger snapped at and the bird pounced at him. Rodney blinked at the bird as John tucked his hands and arms safely out of range. _Huh_.

"See? _Told_ you," John said, scowling at the bird.

Rodney was suddenly distracted by the fox winding around him and sitting on his shoes. A big black wolf crept up and sat beside Teyla, shadowed by a scrawny one that looked something like a very tall dingo more than a wolf, and a large gray wolf that seemed content to stand next to Rodney. If he hadn't already had plenty of reminders that it was a dream, Rodney would have been slightly more than panicked. And his allergies would have been killing him. But he just stared, jaw hanging open.

At the wall, John swore out loud and Rodney looked up to see a big cat jump from one of the trees on the other side of the fence to the wall behind Ronon. It was huge and different colors, brown and yellow and black, with stripes and spots and huge front incisors that fanged out over the lower jaw like a sabertooth tiger but... Not. The animal balanced on the wall beside Ronon, staring at Rodney and Teyla, as it perched on a cat-loaf over the massive paws.

Another big cat jumped between branches in the tree beyond Ronon, but the only reason Rodney saw it was the cat's jump disturbed a big eagle that had been perched on the branch it relocated to. The eagle _scqree'd_ at the cat's shaky landing and the jaguar did a fair feline impression at mocking him. The brown wings arched into the air but the eagle held his spot as the black jaguar disappeared into the tree another branch higher and further away.

It was dark, in this dream, and Rodney could barely see them aside from the slight glow of the animals. John had tried to describe a glow like that when he was babbling. It was curious that his random inebriated rambles had struck Rodney so hard that he was locked in a dream with them.

"So what are we supposed to see?" John asked. The idiot climbed carefully to his feet on the wall. It was as thick as a tree trunk and he should have had footing, but he was four yards in the air above the ground, and he stared out at a wall of tree branches, kept lifting onto tiptoes. If he tried to jump for added height, Rodney would kill him personally.

"We could go find out," suggested Ronon. He pointed to the cats. "They seem to know what they're looking for."

The dreamworld morphed then. A section of the wall, the one that Ronon and John were entirely supported by, disappeared in a warped spin, like a wormhole had evaporated a path through it right between the two men. The two animals in the trees scattered to defensive positions and the raven in front of John was making a screeching racket aimed at the section of wall no longer there. The trees were gone and the world seemed to bend wrong through the forest. John and Ronon both scrambled down from on top of the fence, moving to peer through the hole that had been left in it instead, from the relative safety of the ground. Which presumably wouldn't be as likely to twist out from under them, but Rodney had certainly dreamed stranger things. He still ran up to them.

The view created through the distortion was of the active stargate, the blue glow reflecting off the rounded edges of the collapsed forest that had been condensed and tunneled through like folded paper. The oddity of it was that the 'gate didn't face the hole that had been created. It was at a full sixty degree angle away from the open event horizon and the stargate vortex could not have distorted through the forest from that direction.

"We closed that," John observed.

"We came through two days ago," Teyla reminded him.

"Anybody get the address? I can't see the DHD from here," said John. He started to go through the wall but Rodney wasn't on board with that idea at all and caught his arm, strangely solid, and refused to let him walk through whatever wormhole the wall had created through the forest.

Instead, John looked back at him. And a moment later, Rodney was staring at John, face to face, with a dying fire pit behind him rather than a distant stargate. They were both very much awake, back in their shared sleeping bag. Green-faded eyes watched Rodney, wide and focused, not all black pupils anymore, and bright despite the shadows.

"Mer..." John said, quiet and questioning. Rodney blinked at him.

"Wait. Did you-"

"Big cats," said John. "And a freaking raven?"

Rodney nodded. "I saw wolves. And- and a fox..."

John started scrambling to get to his feet, tangling in the sleeping bag before he remembered how they worked. He ended up kneeling beside Rodney, heels of his hands pressed to his eyes.

"Get water-" Rodney began, but John shook his head. He blindly caught at Rodney's arm.

"Later. Get up. Let's go," John replied. His voice was loud, like his senses were spiking. All the same, he shoved himself to his feet and dragged on Rodney to get him to come along.

"Go _where_?"

"Gate."

Rodney frowned at him but reached for his boots as he sat up. "It's an hour away. The 'gate will be closed by the time we get there."

John stared at him. Rodney didn't feel as pleased as he thought he would have at the visible proof of the headache that went along with the hangover. "Okay... We take the-"

"No. No flying."

"Okay... Then you can pull the last addresses." John would have rolled his eyes but the wincing was taking most of his effort. Rodney nodded and pulled on John's hand.

"I can't read the addresses without a tablet, and Elizabeth made me leave that, so-"

"So fine, we take the _Jumper_ ," said John. But he relented to the draw back to the sleeping bag. "In the daylight. And you check the addresses off the Jumper's console."

Rodney nodded his approval of that plan. "Knew you'd figure it out."

John didn't miss the heavy sarcasm and glared. He stuck cold hands under Rodney's shirt once he was settled down again. Rodney hissed at him for it, but almost instantly he heard John's breathing change and the tight twist of his face loosened up. Rodney sighed and tucked his forehead to John's.

"Dials," he reminded, carefully quiet. "Hearing at three. Vision at two. Balance the rest off me."

John nodded ever so slightly, his eyes locking on Rodney's for a moment. He matched their breathing, closed his eyes, kneaded his fingers slightly against Rodney's ribs and stomach. It was distracting and Rodney pressed a kiss to his cheek rather than suffer through it like a stoic. John was half asleep, in some kind of pain, and trusting him without arguing. Rodney wasn't used to those rare moods, even if they had happened before, though only a handful of times in a month.

"Thanks," John muttered after a few minutes, proving he wasn't asleep despite going still.

"You still need to sleep it off," Rodney replied.

"I wasn't _high_ , Rodney..."

"You made your food _fly_ into your mouth _and_ provided sound effects," said Rodney. John shut his mouth after that. And he wriggled down to bury his face up against Rodney's neck and hide under the blanket, because he apparently forgot they had no tent.

"Were you really in my head?" Rodney asked, feeling stupid for voicing it. "I was just dreaming, right?"

"You were in mine," said John, voice muffled as he started shuffling around again under the protection of the sleeping bag.

"No I wasn't- _wait_ , what about Teyla and Ronon?"

"Nuh uh. No way," John replied, voice loud again. The dials slipped. Either Rodney had surprised him with the question, or he was messing with them.

"Where are the dials at?" Rodney asked, and there was a guilty silence from John. He went still and settled, stayed that way. Rodney fell asleep before he did, lulled by the familiar breathing as it evened out and the weight of John's arm over his waist. He stayed that way for a few more hours, with no weird dreams to interfere with it.

~*~*~

Sunlight in his face woke Rodney, bright and unfiltered by a window or shades, and cold air thick with the heavy aromas of every single plant on the continent. Morning-bloom flowers were a worse curse than the unapologetic sunlight and Rodney started sneezing mere seconds after taking his first fully conscious breath. He suddenly understood why the vegetables with every meal tasted like candy because the flowers all smelled like grapefruit drenched in sugar syrup.

Rodney had to untangle himself from the sleeping bag, with John and an obvious migraine not about to make that easy, and went back to get his pack from the common house where they were supposed to be staying. The air was crisp and it woke him up the rest of the way, but the sneezing fit threatened to start up again. No more sleeping outdoors for him. No way. Whatever was in the planet's humidity was annoying.

The building was quiet and Rodney felt like he was intruding, but he needn't have, he learned, once he was inside and his eyes had adjusted to the shadows again. Dr. Jackson had been smart enough to retreat to the common house overnight, and Teyla and Ronon kept to their own sleeping bags like they always did, though they were snug up next to each other. Rodney had made plenty of noise as he stomped up the steps, so Daniel and Teyla were both already up. In his corner beside the door, Daniel stood and had started putting away his sleeping bag as Rodney cleared the door. Across the room, Teyla looked her usual put-together aside from a little bedhead, and Ronon was just an oversized lump under a blanket behind her.

"Good morning, Rodney," she greeted. Rodney nodded but made a determined line for his pack and started searching for his antihistamine.

"Everything okay?" Ronon asked. The man propped himself up on an elbow to watch Rodney pick through the pack.

"Allergies," Rodney sniffled back at them. He found what he was looking for, popped a pill with the help of a nearly empty plastic water bottle he had tucked in an outside pocket, and then sat still. Just to breathe, because he could convince himself that the sneezing fit would all be over soon.

But then he saw his friends looking back at him. The impossible question climbed up into his brain and he couldn't shake it. "Did you both... Sleep okay?"

With an automatic shrug, Teyla nodded. Ronon made a face.

"Weird dreams," he said. Teyla looked away, down at him.

"Really?" she asked. Ronon arched one eyebrow.

"You?" he asked.

"If either of you had dreams about glowing animals and the stargate, we are all going back to Carson the second the others wake up," Rodney said, resolved on that and shaking his head. No way. Not happening. "We are not suffering some kind of group hallucinations off-world, with sentinel in the mix especially."

"Wait- excuse me?" Daniel asked. Rodney glanced up at him, started to remind the man that he hadn't been in their heads, and thankfully realized that sounded insane before the words left his mouth. Then he started to wonder on _why_ and _who_ in addition to the _how_ and got even more flustered.

Unlike her team, Teyla didn't seem concerned. "I'm sure there's another explanation, Rodney. We've all had the brine before and there weren't problems last time. Really, this dream wasn't a _problem_... Just something different."

"How?" Rodney asked. "We can't all have the same dream. I didn't sign up to have anyone else in my head. John didn't."

"We weren't in each other's heads," she replied, calm as ever. "They were dreams. We go somewhere else to dream."

"You dreamwalked?" Daniel asked, his efforts at stowing his gear forgotten. " _All_ of you? Together?"

Rodney stalled out, just barely catching himself before he rolled his eyes and riled anyone before six AM. "That's not actually how dreams work, people... See, dreams are just... The brain processing input from the day during rest. It's... It's a physical, chemical reaction..."

"I know what dreams are, Rodney," said Teyla. There was a very definite set to her jaw that hadn't been there before and Rodney hung his head. He had tried to keep the peace, no one could say he hadn't made the effort...

"It's just-"

"Rodney," Teyla interrupted. She didn't sound angry at least but he would have felt better if John had been there for him to blame it on again so at least _one_ of them stayed on their team's good side. Still, she waited on him to look up and then smiled somewhat. "Not _all_ of us experience dreams the same way. And it would seem that, for whatever reason, my team experienced dreams as I have. I assume it has to do with the brine, but I really don't know."

Rodney shook his head. "That was... The Wraith were involved for those dreams you had before."

"The _Wraith_ are _here_?" Daniel asked, but Rodney didn't know the answer to that, and Teyla was talking over him.

"And how did I dream about the Wraith?" she asked. Rodney shrugged and nodded.

"It was telepathic. But the rest of us-"

"Are not burdened with my gift, yes. And yet somehow the team is quite connected. When you don't sleep, the rest of us don't sleep. When Blair is angry, you and I are short tempered and restless," Teyla said. Thankfully, currently, she was not angry. And it stood out to Rodney that, for once, he could confidently read that. "So that we can, as a team, experience that same manner of dreaming... Does not really surprise me."

She had valid points. Rodney was having to wrap his mind around more alien weirdness that he had no explanation for and Teyla's at least made sense.

"Does that mean the Wraith are nearby?" he asked. Teyla could only shrug as she had no way to know more than he did about their shared dream.

"I do not feel their presence as I did before. This was merely a shared dream," she said.

"It means we need to check the 'gate," said Ronon.

" _And_ you need to talk to Blair about this," said Daniel. "There was stuff in his original thesis about dreams. And about the animal guides from last night. This could just be like what happened on the way out here. I mean, don't take this the wrong way, but... Who knows with you guys."

"John wanted to go to the 'gate hours ago," replied Rodney. He looked over at Daniel to make sure the man knew he had been heard finally. "If everyone is awake, we'll talk to Sandburg on the way."

"Well. Where is Sheppard? And the others, too," asked Ronon.

"Hiding from a hangover." And now that his entire face wasn't in danger of being sneezed off, Rodney needed to get back and make sure the man hadn't done something stupid; his track record for that wasn't great lately. He changed his shirt to get away from some of the smoke and sweat of sleeping in his clothes from the day before and headed out again to where he had left Sheppard.

When he got there he found the Colonel sitting up with his sunglasses on his face. The sleeping bags had been rolled up, he used one of them as a pillow, but it didn't look like he had ventured to move far from where he had started. Mostly, as it turned out, because he was still dizzy. The disorientation cleared up a little once Rodney was back, so the Guide made the completely random guess that the Sentinel senses had been keyed up and trying too hard while competing with a headache. John also napped on his shoulder for a bit, so needing more sleep might have been a factor.

Rodney was the opposite of an expert in his field suddenly and after sharing dreams with glowing animals, he was willing to accept that he was just making shit up as he went along.

When the others woke up, Rodney got John moving. The Sentinel were all three unsteady on their feet until Teyla's kind soul of a sister-in-law put plates of food in their hands, and something that smelled very much like coffee that she didn't ask Blair about first. But if Ellison was willing to drink it, it had to be safe. Right? Rodney was discovering a certain layer of paranoia about John lately, like he had been tasked with keeping a puppy from chewing the furniture, and like thirty percent of the furniture was poisoned.

"Me and Rodney need to make a field trip to the 'gate this morning," John announced as he finished his breakfast.

"Uh, and you need to talk to Blair," added Daniel Jackson, not about to forget what he had heard an hour earlier apparently. Rodney sighed as Blair looked over at him and John.

"What happened?" the Guide asked.

And Rodney, Teyla, John, and Ronon each chimed in with something of their shared dream, with Teyla adding in the explanation of her gift of telepathic dreams. She didn't mention the Wraith, however, with her family and other villagers within easy enough earshot.

"I dreamed about stuff like that, too," said Stiles, confused. "I was playing with Derek's wolf and then we went to the fence."

"That wasn't you, it was the fox," said Derek, quiet enough that Rodney hardly heard him. "You were asleep the whole time I was gone. I checked."

"Well, that's nice. I'm still saying, dream or whatever it was, I saw all the weird glowy animals I saw at the fire last night, and they were all at the wall," said Stiles. He, like the other two hungover Sentinel, hid behind sunglasses. (Ronon, however, seemed fine.)

To Rodney's surprise and disappointment, Blair didn't dismiss them all as crazy. Quite the opposite, he started nodding. "Yeah, if, uh, if all of you saw the stargate, we need to listen to that," he said.

"Wait, _what_?" asked John. Jim caught their attention with a nod and he jerked his chin toward his partner.

"Blair and I saw the guides at the wall," he said. Calmly. Rationally. Like sharing dreams was normal and fine. "And for all of us to be shown the same thing, it means we need to pay attention. So. We'll check it out."

"Can someone please explain why we're all _fine_ with a group hallucination now?" Rodney really, _really_ wanted to know.

"Uh, I didn't dream about the wall," Daniel pointed out. "Just... To be clear, here."

Stiles seemed startled. "Wait, you didn't?"

Daniel shook his head. Rodney rolled his eyes, probably would have sassed off something rude that he only half meant, but John snuck a hand up against his back to pull his attention, and Rodney reigned in the frustration.

"Okay, a partial-group hallucination then," he amended instead. "It's the kind of thing I would assume we _don't_ want."

"It's the kind of thing that _isn't_ a hallucination, Rodney," replied Blair. "These guys could _see_ energy. Derek could actually pick it up. So this shared dream was a possible... Manifestation of that. We don't know what to expect from all of this. We're dealing with high ATA, on a foreign planet, after consuming a foreign drink... And I can guarantee you, I've never dealt with telepathy in a team. But the energy guides are confirmable. Their senses pick them up."

"So... Not a hallucination," John said in summary. "Told you. Not high."

"And yet somehow, _the team_ is manifesting _energy_ , that takes the shape of animals, that _only_ the Sentinel can see, when they are in an _altered state_ that may or may not be _caused_ by a hallucinogenic?" Rodney returned, the question asked of Blair but the glare aimed at John.

"Well, yes, when you put it _that_ way, it sounds bad," said Blair. He sighed and had to think up another approach. "See, here's the thing. There are other ways to perceive things. Meditation can produce an altered state where you can see these energies, no different than you did in the dream, right? It takes practice, but it can happen. And that's just... Training the brain to approach consciousness a little differently."

"Blair... Brain activity," said Daniel suddenly, derailing Blair. "High ATA. ProX. Did your team ever check brain activity patterns?"

"We haven't paid attention to percentage levels of the ATA, only the presence of it," said Blair. "John was the only one we've gotten brain scans on-"

"He was in a zone out, every time," Rodney pointed out. "There was nothing _but_ activity."

"That's not enough," said Daniel, shaking his head. " _Telepathic_ brain activity is discernible on a functional MRI scan. It has its own _energy_ readings, it's trackable in the brain. Which means that energy has to go somewhere, right? Enough energy generating in one spot, it's... Manifesting somehow. Rodney was being less than genuine, but what he was suggesting was... Well, plausible, isn't it?"

Rodney blinked at the man. "It is?"

Daniel nodded. "I've certainly seen stranger."

"We could ask Carson to do some testing..." Blair said. His excitement was quieted by a glare from Sheppard behind his sunglasses.

"Not a lab rat," he reminded them, cranky.

"Oh come on, it's just a brain scan," returned Rodney. He had gone from cursing a dream to curious, with a dozen theories he wanted to chase down suddenly. "What if the ProX activated different areas of your brain than just those relating to the sensory perception? What if you're generating energy... fields, or whatever, and what you think is a raven attacking you is really just your own fault?"

"I'd think that raven is less annoying than you right now, that's _what-if_ ," said John. "Now, the only testing I'm signing off on any time soon, remotely related to this topic, is the testing of the DHD and the retrieval of the recent addresses. So can we go?"

Rodney rolled his eyes and decided not to argue with the man's hangover. He was cranky, Ellison wasn't much better, and Blair didn't seem any more inclined to take a stand on their curiosity than Rodney was. The Captain's Guide glanced at Rodney, shrugged confirmation, and then nodded his agreement with the plan.

~*~*~

Fifteen minutes later, the team was packed into the Jumper. It took a little extra time for the Sentinel to get steady on their feet and head off to find fresh clothes, wake up a little more in general. John traded out the casual button down for his usual tee and BDUs while everyone else still had their vacation colors on. Stilinski and Sandburg both had a thing for flannel plaid overshirts that were probably going to make the Molanbe and their hand-dyed clothes jealous. Unlike the Athosians, the Molanbe dealt in linens and cloth more often than leather, and seemed to prefer bright colors, which was yet another reason they would make great trading partners for Atlantis. If they ever got around to showing up with intent to trade rather than socialize.

When they did finally make it out to the Jumper, John started to take the copilot's chair to leave the controls to Rodney but almost immediately stopped the moment his hand touched the seat back. He stopped Rodney before he could sit in the pilot’s chair and tugged on his jacket sleeve.

"C'mere," he said, apparently forgetting that Rodney wasn't a Sentinel because he only just barely heard the request. But Rodney followed him back out, edging by the others still filing inside. Ronon stopped and looked back at them but John waved him off.

"Just hang out in here for a minute," he ordered. "We'll be right back."

And to Rodney's surprise, everyone seemed to accept that. He followed as John wandered off away from the ship, toward the water. He noticed, too, when the glare of the sun reflected just a little weird off the side of the Jumper as they walked away.

"Did you just-"

"Shields, yeah," said John, nodding. He stood on the sand, in his now-sloppy uniform, jacket in his hand, sunglasses on his face and doing nothing to relax the wince that creased his brow and flattened his lips. The Lt. Colonel looked very out of place. Rodney had gotten used to the other beach view, with John half dressed in board shorts and sometimes a damp button-down. The uniform said he was back to work but the visible headache said otherwise.

"We don't know the shields do anything for sound," Rodney pointed out, taking a guess. John just nodded again, waved a hand to dismiss it.

"Just go with me on this, I'm experimenting," he said. That was amusing.

"So who's the lab rat, here?" Rodney asked. John didn't seem to catch the humor.

"Me. And them. But if we can see the shields, we can hear them. I can feel them when I'm standing close enough, so. We're gonna find out, okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine. The point is, why?" Rodney motioned toward the ocean just down the dune from them. "This is not the 'gate. So..."

John stuck his hands in his pockets and straightened up, not at attention but something similar, a forced alertness.

"I want to fly. And I think I can do it. But I'm not stupid, either," he said. He seemed to find the horizon line fascinating. "And I know with the last week, the way everything's gone the second I touch it, nobody's got a damn reason to trust me making a call like that. So. I want you to make it."

Rodney wasn't sure he had heard that correctly. "I'm sorry- say again?"

"Will you sign off on me flying us out there? You're a whole Lt. Colonel. You can take the helm and tell me to take the backseat if you wanted. I don't think I'm too compromised to fly, but if you do, then I won't."

"You- me?" Rodney stammered. "But you- look, you don't have to fly, is the thing. You've obviously got a headache, at least-"

"Yeah, maybe, but I can fly with a headache. The Jumpers actually help that part," John replied, nodding his head.

"They help with a _hangover_?"

"Well, I haven't exactly tested _that_ theory before."

There was an obvious reluctance to John's words and Rodney frowned at him. "And you think testing it with eight other people in the ship is a _good_ idea?"

"I _think_ I'm fit to fly, so I don't think there's much _to_ test, is my point, Rodney," said John. Crossing his arms, frustrated at the fact that John had to ask him, let alone the fact that he had gone ahead and done it anyway, Rodney had to consider it. It wasn't exactly a small thing that John was asking rather than just taking the seat and arguing down any complaints. It stood out that he was asking _Rodney_ , not Blair or Jim or anyone else, but he wasn't asking for a favor, either. An informed decision, then, as Guide and some kind of... commanding officer.

Rodney glanced back at the Jumper, thinking it over. No one had come out looking for them yet. Looking back to John, he raised a hand enough to wave him closer, stepping in to meet in the middle. Sheppard didn't argue about it, just presented himself like he had been called to a line-up. Rodney caught the Aviators off the man's face and watched his eyes adjust supernaturally quickly to the unfiltered light. He wasn't actually trying to torment for the sake of revenge and was instead checking his reflexes. The lighting annoyance was something the Jumper would take care of for Sheppard in the pilot's seat, adjusting whatever levels needed fixed for his senses, like every other piece of Lantean technology seemed to, but the ships couldn't do everything.

"I mean it. Thinking’s clear. I can see fine, I can hear everything. Good to go," John said, and his voice did show volume control for the first time in hours. "A little dehydrated maybe, that's all."

"Close your eyes and touch your nose, then," Rodney challenged. And the jerk did it. Like he was well practiced at field sobriety tests, in contrast to Rodney, who knew practically nothing about them beyond the theory. Without looking, John then poked Rodney on the nose, trying to be cute.

“Want me to quote pi?” he offered, eyes still closed. He obviously couldn’t see the glare but it slipped out anyway.

"I _don't_ want one of our last few Jumpers falling out of the sky with me in it,” Rodney clarified. “But I also don’t want the Jumper arguing with me because your freakish genes are sulking about it in the copilot's chair.”

“Yep,” John agreed, quick and making a valiant effort at professional again. His hand still touching his nose and eyes still closed, the effort was doomed to failure. Rodney caught his arm and tugged it down so the man would stop _trying_.

“No matter what I say, Blair and Jim can overrule it,” he pointed out. John nodded.

“Yeah. But if you don’t think I can do it, none of them will,” he replied. Then he shrugged. “Well, Ronon and Teyla maybe. But believe it or don’t, I’m not looking to start a war. I just... want to fly. That’s... part of this whole thing. Feature. Not a bug.”

It made a certain sense and, aside from the visible signs of headache, John did seem to be himself. He had certainly flown before when hurt worse. Rodney just had to make the call and stick to it when Sandburg and Ellison started frowning at him about it.

And there was a certain curiosity to it, too; what would the biochemical connection to the Jumper do with the Colonel’s state? Whatever had hit the Sentinel couldn’t actually impact the Lantean tech that kept the ships in the air, but would it influence the computer’s capacity the same way it had left their senses picking up different spectrums? John had that impact on the Daedalus, after all, so whatever booster was in that damn drink had some kind of influence on brain activity; how long would it last? Satisfied he could convince Blair to let them try it, without mentioning the words _lab rat_ , Rodney reluctantly nodded.

“Fine,” he said. “But if anything starts to slip, anything at all, you send controls to me and stay out of it. No arguing with the computers right now.”

John smiled at him, nodding and apparently happy with the arrangement. “You got it, buddy. All good. No arguing.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Rodney replied. John thumped him on the shoulder and started them back toward the Jumper. He motioned toward the sunglasses Rodney had taken from him earlier.

“Can I have those back now?”

Glancing at the folded-up glasses in his hand, Rodney realized he had forgotten he still had them. To his credit, he considered giving them back. But then he shook his head and unfolded them, placed them purposefully over his own eyes.

“No. I don’t think so.”

The surprising thing was that John let him keep the Aviators. And Rodney thought about stretching that benevolence out a few hours, just to see how far it went. It was too dark to see inside the Jumper with them on, though, and he had no intention of carrying them, so Rodney handed them over the console as he settled in the copilot's chair. That seemed to make Sheppard happy, but it was impossible to know if it was the returned property or the quiet from the peanut gallery as the Lt. Colonel assumed control of the Puddlejumper.

~*~*~


	9. Chapter 9

They spent more time debating if John was safe to fly than they did in the air. Trying to sort out what parts of his job he could own or not left John feeling like the fourth cook in the kitchen. His week-long stretch of bad luck really, _really_ wasn’t helping. But flying for even a minute, having a _computer_ at least understand his brain, well, that was a vacation all on its own.

Even after a month of feeling like he had a handle on smelling his teammates’ _emotions_ and how to turn that shit off without trouble, stuff still surprised him. The brine had betrayed him, across the board. He felt like a teenager again, with his senses screwing with everything he thought he knew about himself, but the Jumpers knew what to do with him so something still worked.

The Puddlejumper eased down at the edge of the clearing around the stargate and John got the hatch open for everyone to leave. And everyone did, mostly, with Rodney grumbling at everyone to get out of the way as he grabbed the Jumper’s toolkit from the back storage area and headed for the DHD. Daniel was the second-best ‘gate expert, so he walked with Rodney as Stiles kept up on their heels. Ellison and Blair and Derek started scouting around the clearing, watching their six.

John stayed where he was, using the excuse to check the area for any other life-signs using the on-screen displays. It surprised him a little when Ronon dropped into the seat Rodney had abandoned. He could tell Teyla lurked in the doorway at the back of the forward section, not that he knew what his team smelled like or anything. But he did.

“Hey guys,” he greeted. He somehow sensed an ambush and the gut feeling had nothing to do with the whole Sentinel thing.

“Hey,” replied Ronon. “You done being stupid yet?”

The HUD went blank as Sheppard tripped over the question. He turned to look at his friend.

“What was that, exactly?” he asked.

"You heard me." And Ronon smiled at him. John sat up a little straighter in his chair, because the words at face value were stirring for a fight, which Ronon did for fun. Teyla eased up from where she leaned on the wall and moved to sit behind Ronon.

"While his words were perhaps intentionally abrasive, Ronon is asking from a place of concern, John," she said.

"That's well and good, but someone could clarify _stupid_ and it would go a long way toward preventing an asskicking," John replied.

"Yeah, yours maybe," agreed Ronon. It wasn't like he was wrong but it still rankled.

"Ronon..." John began.

"Stupid. Meaning _you're_ the Lt. Colonel. And you went out to ask _McKay_ if you could fly this thing,” said Ronon. “And nothing against McKay, but he’s not the team lead, and _since when_ are you afraid to fly.”

“Who said I was-”

“You did.”

“I _said_ I wouldn’t fly if he didn’t want me to fly,” returned John. “Big difference.”

“How?”

“Look, I can’t tell my team to take a walk, okay? These guys are here. They are _ours_. And, incidentally, they’re the only thing keeping me from getting replaced. That’s the chain of command now, and it includes Rodney. That’s just how it works. So I can’t just walk all over what Sandburg and Ellison tell me to do. Do you get that?”

“I get chain of command, but since when do _you_ hold to it?” replied Ronon.

“Since I keep screwing up. I can either kiss up until people don’t think I’m crazy, or we all stay grounded,” said John, glancing back at the rear hatch to make sure no one was snooping. He glanced out the window and took a headcount just to back it up. “And don’t try to tell me they don’t. I can... freakin’ smell it, okay? I can hear it. It’s been one thing after another since we got back and Sandburg was ready to toss me in the brig for everybody’s _safety_. And instead we’re out here. Better than Earth, but not by much.”

“Sandburg smells like fear because he’s scared, sure, but it’s not of you,” said Ronon. “He’s been that way since the Daedalus.”

“And my luck getting the rest of us stuck in a coma didn’t help,” replied John. “Whether it’s my fault or not, it’s at least my job not to make it worse. I’m failing at that so far. So if McKay’ll back me up, set the others at ease, then I’ll go ahead. That’s apparently his job now.”

“Your people do things backwards,” Ronon said. John snorted, his agreement banked.

“Yeah, well, why do you think I like it out here?” he replied. “And I want my city back. And my job. I’m not going back to being the grounded lab rat with the gene. So if that means I have to ask permission for awhile until I get the science geeks off my back, I’ll do it.”

“Well, if you’re taking suggestions then, I’ve got a few,” said Ronon. Teyla leaned forward then, cutting Ronon a quieting glare. It was nice to see the trick seemed to be a Guide thing in general, because Ronon shut his mouth just as quick as John did when Blair used that face. Thankfully, Rodney hadn’t learned it, or if he had, John was already impervious to it after two years.

“As do I, Colonel,” said Teyla. “And I would chance a guess that my ideas may be more useful than Ronon’s when it comes to recent frustrations.”

Ronon shrugged at that, ruffled a little by the dismissal but taking it in his usual stride with nothing more than a muttered “Whatever.”

"Considering his so far have amounted to calling me _stupid-_ " John said, shrugging and trading glares with his friend.

"Oh, gonna cry about it?" challenged Ronon.

"No, but come on, even I can do better than _that_ ," John replied. He got the glare that time for taunting and Teyla looked from face to face like she wanted to strangle them both. The chastised children slouched in their pilots' chairs and waited for the lecture, eyes to the floor.

“Which brings up my first reminder, Colonel,” Teyla said, her intent gaze turning to him then. “You _still_ have your job. We are still _your_ team. This is your team.” She paused, waving to herself and Ronon, then out the window where Stiles could be seen, crouching next to Rodney at the DHD, asking questions that - judging from the look on Rodney’s face - were not helping the man with his task of finding the data crystal configuration he was looking for. Daniel stood leaned against the back of the DHD, looking entertained rather than helpful. Between the two of them, it was a good bet that Rodney was going to be cranky on the ride back. He got up his knees then, mid lecture about something John didn’t bother tuning in for.

“Whether you answer to anyone else in this chain of command is irrelevant. Your first priority has always been your people, and there has been nothing over the last few months that should have changed that,” said Teyla.

“Except maybe making sure I’m still sane,” muttered John, watching Ellison work with Derek on tracking something in the worn dirt just off in front of the stargate.

“If I could figure the senses shit out when Sateda went down, you can figure it out now,” Ronon pointed out. “Atlantis is still standing.”

The insightful logic was left to hang there as their quiet chat was interrupted by voices on approach outside. Not long after, McKay led the way up the ramp, with Stiles matching his steps, and Daniel trailing lazily behind.

“I’m just saying, if you can teach me what those boards look like, you don’t have to do that stuff,” said Stiles with his usual insistence. “I’m here anyway, right? And you’re, like, old. It would just be easier.”

Rodney stopped between the chairs, distracted from his objective by the teen’s words, and he slowly turned to stare at him for the rudeness of the blunt and accurate observation. Rather than bow to the Guide glare, Stiles took advantage of the offense to grab the crystal out of Rodney’s hand and turned to John with it.

“He said the addresses are on this one,” he reported. John had to struggle not to laugh and tried to nod without drawing any of Rodney’s ire to himself.

“Right...” he began. Rodney seemed to recover and snatched the crystal back. Then he looked to Ronon, saw the man’s smug grin and casual, comfortable slouch, and turned his glare to John.

“Chair. Out. Now.”

Rather than argue, John stood and let the scientist have the controls. He carefully inserted himself between Stiles and Rodney before his Guide blew a mental circuit due to the intrusion of a teenager on his territory. Stiles lurked at John’s shoulder, watching Rodney mess with the controls under the dash at the center console.

“Wait, this is the onboard DHD, right?” Stiles asked. “So this should look like the DHD set up out there, right?”

Rodney glanced up, surprise masked behind the glare he was apparently determined to stick to, but he didn’t answer. John patted the kid on the shoulder as he leaned over the console trying to see.

“You’ll figure this stuff out quick,” he said, the only affirmative he was willing to risk. Rodney scoffed at the controls.

“Don’t encourage him,” he muttered. But then Rodney was back in the chair and the HUD was running through ‘gate addresses. Just by sight, John could tell that of the three most recent dial-outs, only one of them was from their previous day’s check-in with Atlantis.

“Crap,” Rodney said as he stared at the screen.

That was not good.

John leaned into his space and put his hand near the chair sensors, mentally requesting the known information on the most recent address. The planet name, climate, and population data scrolled up instantly, spelling out Rodney’s reaction in plain English on the HUD display.

“Genea,” said Teyla unhappily.

“The Genii are the bad guys, aren’t they?” Stiles asked, a foreign note of caution in the young man’s voice.

“Well, that depends on your definition of _bad guys_ ,” replied John, offering a vague shrug. “If you mean the guys who tried to kill us a couple times and steal our Jumpers, I suppose bad guys works. But technically, we’ve got an alliance... They don’t try to kill us, we don’t try to kill them. We just haven’t checked in on that in a while.”

The HUD went back to the recent addresses and the Genii homeworld address was very clearly evident in at least five visits out of the fifty that they had accessed. That meant they had a problem with their safe zone among Teyla’s people. John eased back and tapped Rodney on the shoulder.

“Get the DHD put back together. We’re out of here,” he said. Rodney nodded and ducked forward to pull the data crystal. John looked back at Teyla.

“We should probably get a little specific with your brother about their alliances the last few months, I’m thinking,” he said. She nodded.

“Treyn was going out hunting, but Della will know,” Teyla said. Rodney edged around John then, data crystal in hand and Stiles following after him. Ronon stood and left with them, taking up a supervisory position off the front edge of the Jumper. Daniel hung around, everyone reasonably confident his presence wouldn’t be needed at the DHD this time. John tapped into the radios.

“Once Rodney’s got the DHD back together, everybody fall back. We need to get to the village,” he ordered. Outside in the clearing, Ellison and Sandburg showed up from behind a bramble of some kind of berry bush and headed for the Jumper. Derek turned up at the back hatch like he had already been on the way.

The annoying dehydration headache was slowly morphing into a tension in John's shoulders and neck, but the rising adrenaline would take care of it before long. He dropped into the abandoned chair and readied the ship as the others filed inside one by one. John passed along the news of the addresses to Blair and Jim, earning a grim nod from the Sentinel and a sort of bug-eyed shock from the Guide.

"Wow," said Sandburg. "I mean, I knew the dream thing was big, but... Well, I didn't really think it would be accurate."

John nodded, shoving down surprise at that. "The list doesn't log a time, just the dial order. Two dial outs _since_ we've been here."

"And it is concerning that Treyn didn't say anything about visitors through the 'gate," added Teyla.

Ronon brought up the rear as Rodney and Stiles returned a few minutes later and John closed his team inside. His headache was gone by the time they flew over the village. It looked the same as before, despite the gut feeling telling John that something was wrong, that he should have seen something different. But nothing stood out. He put the ship down where it had been parked half an hour earlier, out of the village boundaries and hidden between sand dunes.

There was no reason to abandon a friendly culture, especially one with family ties, but if the Molanbe had an alliance of their own with the Genii - as many gate-traveling cultures did - then it would definitely change how they handled the people. Fewer stories from the Atlantis crew, certainly, and no unannounced visits to their Athosian family. They had promised the visits twice now and would have to figure out some other arrangements, as they wouldn't be sending them through the city. Thinking positively, it wasn't an impossible complication, it just meant they brought over a couple of Jumpers and loaded folks in the back, packed like sardines for a few minutes ride rather than a walk through the stargate.

Thinking less positively, something was definitely up and it couldn’t be ignored behind rose colored glasses.

~*~*~

Twenty minutes later, they had tracked down Della, and, as a bonus, Treyn and his hunting party hadn’t yet left. It was short work to steal him away from the gathering of hunters for a chat when he saw the general unhappy glare on his wife's face matched the one on his sister's. John felt quite sympathetic. Treyn left his friends and showed up promptly at his front porch.

"What's wrong?" Treyn reasonably wanted to know, looking around at the group of Lantean guests gathered there.

"Well, it turns out we may have a problem, of sorts," John offered up. He had his sunglasses back and he liked the freedom they allowed him to read people by sight, unnoticed. "So if Teyla and I could trade notes with you two for a minute, that'd be great."

"Of course," said Treyn. And the man waved them invitation ahead of himself into his home. John glanced at Rodney.

"Keep everyone out of trouble for a few minutes," he said, and Rodney nodded, like it was actually a reasonable request. Ronon smirked and John knew the second the door closed, the Satedan was going to find something to stir.

The Emmagan home was cozy, with crafting looms and shelves with tools. The place smelled like leather and wool and drying herbs, and there was a low quiet to the place, like he had stuck his head in earmuffs, that was soothing. It was a reminder that he liked these people, that he had to get the whole Genii thing sorted out right on the first try.

Della shooed her daughter outside with instructions to go keep Daniel company again, which John was thankful for. Otherwise he would have had a monkey climbing on him for the duration. Instead the child just ran into him (with full intent) on her way out the door. Her parents apologized but John waved it off; there were far worse things than Teyla's family declaring him family in their own ways.

"Here's the situation," he began instead. "The stargate has been dialed out twice since we've been here."

Treyn seemed surprised by that. "None of our traders have been through... That would be highly unusual."

"It's a big planet, right? What's the odds another village sent someone through?"

Della shook her head. “No. Our village is the last before the ring. All travelers come through us. We know who leaves so that we know who to expect."

"It's not just courtesy... It's protection. As a courtesy, all travelers come to us before they make the last of the journey, we accompany them, and we close the ring when they are gone," her husband added.

"Everyone does this?" Teyla asked, just to be certain. Her brother nodded.

"It was set up after the last culling, years ago. Our village was burned, survivors evacuated to different villages. It was agreed at Council to set this community up as the fire warning, At the first sign of attack, we are to light the fire trench, and the forest around the ring," her brother replied. “So to prevent false warnings, any travelers report to us so we know if, or when, we are to expect their return.”

John bit his tongue on pointing out the futility of their emergency plans; the Wraith Darts could fly faster than their smoke signals. Teyla's mask slipped, her own concern suddenly right there in the surprised lift of her eyebrows. They would have to share some information with her family, hard facts that could be presented to their Council, before they had the slightest chance of derailing the village's fate as a sacrifice for a culling. It would help if they had an alternative defense to offer up as a replacement to lighting the city on fire, though. But none of that was why they were there.

"Okay. Well... Getting right to the point then. What do your people know about the Genii?" John asked, trying to get Teyla focused again on the problem at hand.

"We traded with them, years ago," said Della. She looked to Teyla in open confusion. "We all did. Until our people stopped using the ring for travel. It was better to rely on our own after the culling. There are few traders through the ring now, only a handful with every cycle. It's kept the Wraith away."

Again, the backwards logic that didn't apply to how the Wraith actually operated distracted Sheppard into wanting to educate Teyla's family at the earliest possibility. But it also left him concerned it would do no good.

"The Wraith _slept_ after the last culling, Della," Teyla said, gentle but firm. "They stayed away because they didn't need to feed. But they are awake now, and they could return. Whether you use the stargate or not. From what we have found the last two years, it seems to have no bearing on their arrival."

At least it was Teyla who said it. They were her family. She knew them. Or had, once upon a time. Her brother was older and the myth said therefore wiser, but he suddenly looked like a kid who had just been told the Easter Bunny didn't really lay eggs. And brother and sister could still argue like siblings, no matter how long it had been since they had seen each other. Treyn was the leader for his village and Teyla calling him out in his own home was definitely not her finest moment, either.

There was a distracting scent on the air, panic and anger and fear, and John fidgeted. The two were painfully loud, even if they weren’t at each other’s throats about anything yet. He stood aside and let Teyla handle the family scuffle she had inadvertently started by calling into question the Molanbe's entire plan for their community's existence. It wasn't what they were there to discuss, but it was the track she had put them on, so they had to see it through.

It was getting a little thick though, with the scents and the inexplicable noise in the house. Sheppard went to the door and found Ronon and Rodney, lurking on the porch with the others, silently called them in. Not for physical reinforcement, but for science and story time, if Teyla's appeals failed. Wild claims required proof, and their team was the only proof they could offer just then.

Treyn's _polite_ argument with his sister fell silent at the intrusion of two more of his guests. He was definitely committed to an image, and it wasn't the look he wore when the baby sister made the mask slip. John gave a polite cough.

"I don't know if you remember, but Ronon's stories that he told the other day? That wasn't stuff from our team. He was a Runner for years after his planet was culled," John said, explaining his calling the other two inside. "And from what I can tell, that happened to his planet not long after it happened to you. But _sleeping_ Wraith don't chase Runners, Treyn. They don't _all_ go dormant at once. These guys are always out there. They're just... not always hungry."

"Well, it's like cattle, isn't it?" offered Rodney. Even he had probably heard the main points from the porch but still seemed reluctant to join in. John nodded at him to get him to say what he had started. "Or- or agriculture. You can't always work the same land without depleting the resource. You have to give nature time to restore itself. The Wraith disappear so their feeding grounds can... repopulate."

"And in between cullings, they have the Runners and their worshippers," Ronon said. "They just keep themselves entertained when they don't have to feed."

"Wraith don't die," Teyla added. "Because they feed on life. Their bodies can go longer without than ours. _Years_. Longer if they sleep. And there are many who remain awake. So there is no timeframe for their return, no... patterns we can follow to keep them away. You _must_ be aware of that, Treyn. There is no way to lead your people safely without knowing this."

"You have no way to know that," Della replied, just a little bit testy.

"We do, actually," said Rodney. "We've told you already- at least some of it."

"We have had plenty of scrapes with the Wraith at this point, and we have learned a lot about how to deal with them. We have some of the technology to hold them off. And we control our Stargate - the ancestors' ring. We've got it indoors so the Darts can't get in and out, for one thing. It's not perfect, but so far it works," said John. "And we can work with you guys on this stuff. You're basically family, right? Teyla's not going to be on board with anything that leaves you out on your own, and we'll do what we can to back her up."

It was a blatant move to settle their hosts' growing frustration and anger, reminding them that they were still all on the same side. It mostly seemed to work, too. Della calmed down and the frown on Treyn's face eased up.

"I am _concerned_ ," Teyla said. "There are things I want you to know. But we only have so much time. And this new problem with the Genii presents a potential threat, enough that I'm afraid we're limited on what we can share until we know for certain how far it goes."

"We told you, no one has come through. There is nothing to report or the report would have been made," said Treyn.

“It’s possible they could have sent something through to the Genii without actually sending themselves through, though,” said John, hedging a little because he didn’t want to explain radios to their hosts just then.

"We have our own Guardians, Colonel Sheppard. They live at the ring, they watch over it and us," said Della. She shook her head. "It has been days since either of them have been to the village. There would have been news."

"What?" Rodney asked, John echoing a heartbeat behind him.

"Guardian, like the Colonel and Stiles?" Teyla asked. Her brother nodded. She glanced briefly to John before focusing on her brother again. "Wouldn't they have made themselves known when we were there this morning?"

"We were digging into the _guts_ of the DHD. If their job is to protect the Stargate, they aren't doing a particularly stellar job," observed Rodney. John leaned into his shoulder as a subtle hint not to antagonize their hosts just then.

"They met your team when you were here last, Dr. McKay," Treyn replied, shaking his head. "Colonel Sheppard played _kazmete_ with them at the fires."

Rodney's attention shot to John then, eyebrows up and mouth open. John blinked at Treyn. The realization that he had been hanging out with yet another Sentinel before coming online got stuck in his head for a moment, and for the life of him he couldn't remember their names. He didn't have the first clue what any _kazmete_ was, either, after so long.

"Well, I'll admit it, I was a little drunk that night, and it was _months_ ago," he said, inwardly wincing in preparation for some _I told you so_ from Rodney. It thankfully didn't come. "So, uh... Refresh my memory on these guys?"

The Emmagan clan in general seemed to be amused by John Sheppard on principle and the chill in the room warmed up to normal again after that. They didn't have any answers as to the 'gate traffic, but Teyla's family gained a better understanding of why the Genii weren't quite the peaceful trading partners they had once promoted themselves to be. As a side note, the new Lantean representatives would be figuring out some way to brief Treyn on everything they knew about the Wraith, just for Teyla's peace of mind, and to make sure the Genii didn't try to scam them somehow with what they claimed to know.

Twenty minutes later, John had few answers and more questions, but he and Rodney left the house with Treyn in search of a messenger. Treyn agreed to send for the village Guardians and get the official report; they were apparently overdue anyway. He didn't want to disturb them by taking the Jumper out to them, however. Apparently these guys were a little territorial, by nature, and changing their routine too much with flying machines would make them the Molanbe version of cranky. John was getting a little bit that way himself, but he rolled with it, pasted on a smile, and watched as Treyn sent somebody on a horse-looking beast to go out to bring the Guardians into town.

They could also be hard to find. It was an hour’s hike out to the ‘gate, and the runner would have to track the men down. On the walk back to the porch and the others, Treyn said he expected it would be a few hours’ project and invited Sheppard’s team to go hunting with them in the meantime. There would be a chance of running into Domi at least on a hunt, and it was certainly something else to do rather than sit around and wait for either a report or an attack.

“Oh, no,” said Rodney quickly. “No, I’ll pass, thank you.”

The predictable refusal wasn’t exactly ignored; John figured on staying with Rodney and sending the others off with Treyn. Out of the village was probably a safer plan until they had answers about the stargate traffic.

“Derek and I want to go hunting,” Stiles said from the porch, before John had done more than open his mouth. This made Treyn happy and Blair confused.

“What about hunting?” the Guide asked.

“It’ll be a few hours before Treyn can get answers,” Jim explained, unabashedly confirming that the Sentinel had all been snooping. “So he offered to take us with the hunting party.”

“Oh...” Blair looked from Jim to the others with obvious reluctance. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea...”

“That’s what I said,” Rodney replied, even though those hadn’t been the words he had used at all.

“It’s a good training environment, Chief,” Jim pointed out. “Better than waiting around.”

“I can sit this one out, right?” Daniel asked. John pounced on the opportunity and nodded.

“Yeah, you and Rodney and I can wait here. In case the Guardians get back earlier than they figure,” he said. "Daniel's qualified on the P90 if anything we don't like stumbles into town. And everybody else will be out in the hills again, safe and sound. We're set."

Looking a little green around the edges, Blair frowned at Jim. "Okay, but hunting, man? Wouldn't you rather do some fishing or something..."

"Hunting. Engages the senses more. Range of vision and hearing is wider. Tracking..." Jim rambled off the advantages like he had the sales pitch memorized. It was almost enough to make John want to go along but he knew Rodney wouldn't go for it and he wasn't leaving him behind to do it.

Jim's argument won out. It bothered John a little but the team wasn't in their uniforms. They were all unknown to any of the Genii and blended passably in with the villagers as long as they didn't have their jackets, and it was too hot for the layers even in the wind that came off the ocean. Stiles and Sandburg were in lighter colored overshirts and tees, but Jim, Derek, and Ronon wore the same neutral, dark tones that the Molanbe hunters had been wearing earlier. Nothing about the crew said they were Lantea's newest crop of protectors. John was confident that Teyla's brother would look out for them. He knew Jim and Derek were fully capable of taking care of their partners, certainly.

Within minutes, half the team was on the Molanbe horses, minus Derek, who insisted he preferred to walk. Ronon decided to pass on the offered animal, too, and he and Derek both jogged alongside the group of twenty-odd horses that left the village with Treyn's hunting party.

"Well, now what?" Rodney asked. John shrugged at him.

"I don't know. You're the one who didn't want to go hunting," he replied.

"So shoot me for thinking we've got bigger problems," said Rodney.

"Bigger problems," John agreed, nodding. "Limited options."

"We could assist with community chores and earn our stay," Teyla suggested, a rather-too-smug grin on her face. John squinted at her for it; he didn't really want to make himself busy and risk missing something important. He shrugged

"I was going to suggest some chess, maybe some golf..."

"Need the tablet for that," said Rodney. John gave a nod.

"As it happens, I brought mine," he replied. Rodney looked over at him, jaw slack.

"You let me sit in the sun all day yesterday- all night, even! - half the time bored out of my mind, and you had a tablet the whole time?!"

“I forgot I had packed it.” John shrugged. "The doc didn't have to order me not to work if I had access to a computer. So I just stuffed the tablet in there."

"Oh my god. It's in your backpack. Isn't it," Rodney wanted to know and John just shrugged again. He happened to know Dr. Jackson had brought his laptop, something else Weir and Sandburg had forbidden Rodney to bring along, but he kept that to himself because Rodney was looking slightly murderous. He nodded enough to catch Daniel's attention.

"If you're good here, I guess we're going to go play golf," he said. Daniel scrunched his face up around his nose.

"I was just thinking I'd go ask Della if I could help with lunch plans. Or something that's... Not golf," he replied. With Rodney still scowling at him because of the tablet, John was not at all offended. He glanced to Teyla and she just rolled her eyes at him, though at least she seemed amused.

"Daniel and I will help our hosts," she said.

"Well, if you need us, we'll be sitting over there, waiting for Domi and Sann to ride into town, or walk. Whichever," said John. He pointed toward the common house and the big front steps that made up the building's porch. "I just want to stay where I can... see and be seen for a while, I think."

Teyla nodded her approval and squeezed his arm as she stepped by him. A minute later, John sat on the steps against the common house wall and listened as Rodney rummaged through his pack inside for the promised tablet. He walked out victorious and smug about it as he sat down beside him.

They were off-world and John was on high alert, so he muttered a quiet request and dropped down a step. Surprised, Rodney allowed it, and tucked the tablet out of the way as John sat down between muddy shoes and leaned back against his Guide’s legs. Rodney hung over his shoulder to hand him the tablet.

“Let me in or I hack it,” he said. John scoffed at that, knowing Rodney didn’t have any of his fancy toolkit or the working network to complete the threat, but he entered the password with no intent to argue. He passed it back and slouched against Rodney, settling in to wait. It was Rodney who snuck a kiss at the side of John’s temple as he reclaimed the tablet. The computer’s presence had obviously improved his mood.

~*~*~


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ___________________________  
> I have good news and bad news!  
>  **Good news!** I think this will end up about 18 chapters, and 14.5 of those chapters are currently written!!  
>  **Bad news:** Beta has only beta'd up to ch. 12...
> 
> But still... it's a little less WiP than it started out!!
> 
> ~ See end notes for this chapter's warnings ~  
> ___________________________

Hunting was one of Blair's least favorite pass-times. He might be a connoisseur of good food, including exotic meats that came from an assortment of animals' assortment of parts, but he had still been raised by an unabashed hippie. And Blair was keenly aware that animals had souls and lives and all that, particularly after having dreamed he himself was a wolf that very morning. But no, Jim wanted to go hunting. So they went hunting. 

The Molanbe had a different approach to their hunting trips. They all left the village as a group, but that group didn't stay together once they got out into the territories. They split up into three groups, technically four. The larger three groups each broke off to track larger game. The fourth, smaller team was to make the rounds and check the traps in the foothills. And, given that Derek and Ronon were without the massive, intimidating horses to ride, they were automatically assigned to the traps team with Orren and his father. Those with horses - Jim, Blair, and Stiles - would head out into the valley to look for some herd animals that Treyn called _pinof_. Supposedly they were tasty and made an excellent stew.

The whole surprise scenario presented Blair with a problem he wasn't sure what to do with. He could split the team - his team - and participate as intended, or he could withdraw AR-1 from the hunt and head back to the village, at the risk of offending their hosts and annoying his team. 

It was annoying because Blair wouldn't have thought twice about any of it if it hadn't been for their discovery at the stargate that morning. Jim was right; trips into the wilderness just like this were the whole reason they had left Atlantis in the first place. _However_. Blair had read Weir's reports on the Genii and didn't want to be on any planet where there might be an enemy. Particularly not out somewhere on their own, with no one handy who knew exactly what they were going to be running into _off-world_. They had left four of their experts behind in the village, and Blair would be sending their fifth off to check for rabbit traps. 

His concern was apparently obvious. The party stopped to establish the meet-up point, where the wagons would be left, and prepare their gear for the next few hours. Blair didn't want to risk getting down from the saddle so he hung back. Jim was a better rider than him and came around with his strange horse to bring the animals shoulder to shoulder and watched as Blair got stuck in his head, debating it out.

"Don't worry about it, Chief," Jim said, keeping quiet. "We have to get out there in it if we're ever going to figure this stuff out. Treyn hasn't lied to us yet. We're safer here than anywhere else."

"We don't know what we're doing, though, Jim. Not really. The risk-"

"Sandburg. Look at it this way," he said. He hesitated before shrugging at it. "We can't get any further from Earth from here if we wanted to. We already took the risk. Okay? This stuff... This is what we took it _for_. And until we have answers to the contrary, there's no reason not to keep moving. Harder target to hit that way. And we learn how things _actually_ work out here. More to go on than some report."

He had a point. It just didn't make Blair feel much more at ease about it. "We don't even know what a pinof looks like, or how to take it down... I barely remember how to ride and this whatever its called is _not_ what I _do_ remember..."

"It's a little like hitting the Old West jackpot," said Jim, agreeing with points that had been intended to ruin his argument, not bolster it. "And the only way to get a feel for it... is to do it. _Learn_. Not a foreign concept to you, Chief."

"I can't help Stiles and Derek with their stuff if I'm out learning to hunt," he replied.

"Then maybe you should loosen their leash a little and let them figure it out on their own," said Jim. Blair narrowed his eyes at the traitorous suggestion. Jim met the stare with one of his own. "I mean it. We've been doing this how many years? These are among the best teams we've worked with, they're smart enough and sharp enough in the month we've been working with them. Not perfect, but quick. Hale got the kid through a zone in the middle of the ocean, just him and Sheppard for crying out loud. So call it pop quiz time. Take the goddamned afternoon off, Professor. Don't take this the wrong way, but everyone would appreciate it. You're amped up and scared, I get it, but part of that is the fact that you've forgotten how this training thing works. Mistakes happen. You don't tighten down the stranglehold to make the screw-ups stop. It doesn't work that way."

"I don't have a stranglehold-" Blair went quiet as Jim arched an eyebrow.

" _Naps_ were made mandatory, under orders," said Jim. "Now, I backed you on that, not gonna say we didn't need it, but you can't tell me that's not... Above and beyond your norm."

The point was considered and sulked over for a minute. Blair scrunched his nose as he looked back up at his friend. "The whole being in command thing. I'm not good at it."

"A little rusty, yeah," Jim replied. Blair nodded.

"Right," he said. "So we're good with splitting up."

"We're staying with Teyla's family. Us with Treyn, and send Stilinski with Hale and Dex," Jim pointed out. "If there's anything I will take at face-value with Pegasus, it's that family ties still hold value, right? We won't get anything safer to gamble on anywhere else."

"You mean on any other _planet_ ," said Blair. Jim grinned at him, just a little.

"I'm starting to get used to that idea, yeah," he replied. 

"I _thought_ I was good with it, but it's definitely catching up on me," Blair said. "I guess that's your point, huh? Get over it?"

His ever-watchful Sentinel shrugged. "Not exactly. Just... It's been noticed. Let's get ahead of it this time, before the other Guides start crawling the walls along with you, huh? However we gotta get you grounded."

Blair huffed, darkly amused by the observation. Jim wasn't any kind of an emotional human, despite nearly twenty years of friendship. He could admit to looking out for the team before admitting to worrying about his Guide. Both were expected of him, assumed as literally part of his job after so long, but one was an order of magnitude closer to home. For all his friend was occasionally a possessive jerk, he was still too entrenched in a lifetime of military hypermorality to be caught dead owning up to human feelings and concerns for another _guy_. And with the team always around, Jim wasn't going to let that guard down again for a long while, no matter how open the others were. 

It was a well worn road with Jim after so long and Blair had the map memorized. It would be endearing, if it weren't for the fact that they were the only family the two of them had in the _galaxy_. Blair was feeling the isolation when he had to read through the man's layers of code to get the real message. It was exhausting and Blair was apparently the one who needed a nap. He just shook his head.

"Yeah, big guy. Message received. I don't know what to do about it yet, but I'll work on it," he promised. Jim nudged the restless horse-beast forward, enough to bump his knee and leg very intentionally into Blair's alongside. 

"Take the afternoon off, doc. I mean it. Remember how to ride. Enjoy the scenery. _Something_. Just... Let's go hunting like the aliens want, see what we can get out of that, huh?" he suggested. Blair rolled his eyes.

" _They're_ not _aliens-_ "

Jim nodded, brow raised. "You see my point."

And Blair did. And he found himself relaxing as they closed the hundred yards between where Blair had stopped to stress and where the group of twenty or so riders and two long wagons were setting up a camp of sorts. Ronon had been out with the party already and was coaching Derek through helping with the day-camp set up, while Stiles and Orren were messing around with the wagons that would be staying behind when the camp cleared out for the hunt. Everything was some kind of normal, even if it was all entirely different from anything Blair had any familiarity with. 

The tall grass around the camp was an odd blue-ish tint at the top, the leaves on the random valley trees were a variety of shades from pink and red to green and blue and a faded, sickly looking yellow. Part of Sandburg's brain said it had to do with chemical levels and alkalinity in the soil, but the louder part was freaking out about being on another planet and riding an alien horse. He was allowed to be a little - okay, a _lot_ \- weirded out by reality lately. 

But he didn't have to take that out on everyone else. Jim was right about that. And about the part where there was only one way to get used to the chaos of living in the field, under some threat or another. Maybe Ellison was used to it, him with his military career and his year in the jungle. Another galaxy was probably like remembering how to ride a bike for him; Jim had been stranded and alone before. There wasn't much difference between the jungles of Peru and the Pegasus galaxy when there was no transportation one way or the other. Stranded was stranded. And now he was stranded with a _team_. If they ran into trouble, a stargate they didn't know how to dial and a gateship neither of them could fly were about as useful in terms of an escape plan as anything else, so without their team, they were lost. Wherever they went as members of AR-1, that's what their worst-case-scenario would always be. And Jim had already made it through that, even if it was twenty odd years ago. 

Blair accepted the challenge on the conditional assumption that Jim Ellison had figured out he could survive whatever came at them. He would try to find his old sense of adventure, remember what it was like to be the dumb college kid out on anthropological digs and tribal emersions, and forget about the very much older version of himself who liked to remind him of how many times he had nearly been shot or blown up, kidnapped and stabbed. That was Blair's old life. It was gone, off behind him somewhere in another galaxy, and he was at least a five year contract away from ever having to go back to it.

All of which meant Blair had to get focused, figure out how to ride a not-a-horse, and learn how these particular Tau'ri cousins put food on the table for their village. He didn't argue when it came time for the groups to split up. He met Stiles' excited grin with one of his own, or so he hoped anyway, and guided his mount off after Jim as Treyn and his team headed off into the fields. He and Jim were setting off with a group of six locals, and Stiles, Derek, and Ronon made up over half the team checking the traps. There was safety in numbers. Everything would work out fine.

~*~*~

The pinof turned out to be something like a really big cow. _Really_ big. It was larger than a bison, with three long horns and seemed like a cross between a cow and a triceratops. Somehow. It was mind-bending to look at and Blair held back from the group and openly stared at the massive herd of them out in the blue-green field. Now he understood why they needed the huge horses; the animal he rode was taller than him, and broad across the chest and neck, like a little freight train. And it was still smaller than the pinof.

"Wait here and observe," Treyn advised. "If you see one or two charge off on their own, chase them down... But do not approach. We will find you."

Jim nodded and leaned forward over the high-raised, rolled block of leather that served as the pommel of the saddle, like he was perfectly at home in observation mode. Blair sat back and let himself drift cautiously into academic mode, a bit rusty but easily remembering the history of different tribal cultures and contrasting the textbook theories against the in-live-time hunting practices he watched happen across the open terrain. 

The big pinof herd was startled and chased and broken up, with half of the hunters chasing off the group while the other half harangued the stragglers to make them easier to take down. The Molanbe had their own version of a rifle, but the arrows seemed to be the preferred weapon. The hunters were good shots, and an older calf was rounded back toward where Jim and Blair watched. They stayed out of the way as the animal was put down, one of Treyn’s archers coating wide-bladed arrow tips with some kind of drugged oil before taking the sure shots up close as the pinof stumbled.

It was rather close to the descriptions of hunting Blair had read or seen hundreds of times in his first career, even though he was surrounded by a culture unlike almost any he had ever studied. There was a thrill to that, and for a while Sandburg forgot about the details like the fact that he was in another galaxy, that there was an entire race that wanted to hunt and kill him for food no differently than the Molanbe did the pinof. They waited around their kill as one of the team went back to retrieve the wagon and Blair dragged story after story out of the men and women now that he had more than a vague concept of what hunting meant for their people.

In the middle of one of those stories, Jim sat up a little taller, looking out into the middle-distance toward the foothills. He pointed at whatever he was looking at. "Treyn, what's that, there? Looks like a dog or something..." 

Blair angled around, half leaning out of the bulky saddle as he saw what had caught Jim's attention. It was the tall and scraggly wolf-like animal they had seen in their dreamwalk, with its tawny, buckskin colored coat and black paws, ears, and muzzle. There were four of them, out a hundred yards, their attention on the group of people and beasts surrounding the fallen pinof. 

" _Kayal_ ," Treyn replied. He smiled out at the animals before shrugging. "Watchers. Scavengers sometimes, when needed. Or as now, when it's a kill this big. Some will venture close enough to take scraps. Steal hides from the drying racks if they are not secured properly. You'll only ever see a kayal when they wish to be seen. Domi has befriended a pair, supposedly, though I've never seen them with him."

"Domi, your Guardian?" Blair asked. Treyn nodded. Jim seemed amused by it, shook his head as he looked down at the ground beyond his mount. They exchanged a glance, both knowing there might be more to Domi's kayal than Treyn realized.

Blair looked out at the animals, wishing for the millionth time in his life that he had Jim's vision. He slouched back in the saddle and closed his eyes, schooled his breathing and tried to reach for the grounded, calm mental quiet he hadn't done a good job of keeping in touch with lately. It was harder to get there with so much going on since they had gotten involved with the SGC, he hadn't put in the work. But at the moment, their party was quiet, and Jim jostled his knee and grabbed the reins from his hand to keep the huge horse steady while Blair was distracted. 

It took a few minutes to clear his mind and relax. He felt better afterwards, though. He looked around at the Molanbe hunters and saw faint traces of aura colors at the edges, not as clearly as he thought he should have, but clearer than before he had centered his focus. And when Blair looked out at the point where Jim had seen the kayal, he saw them clearly, just as before. They were all really there, none of them glowing with the bright energy of the animals from their dream that morning. They weren't the animal guides of the Molanbe's Guardian, just hungry wolf-cousins curious if they would be left any scraps.

His curiosity settled, Blair reached out for the reins and Jim passed them over. He took a breath and tried to hang on to the feeling of being grounded. He happened to glance down, saw Jim's hand resting idly on a thigh, and held his own hand out.

"Gimmie that," he said, waving his fingers expectantly. His friend huffed out a laugh and obliged, taking Blair's hand and hanging on. And somehow, just like that, Sandburg managed to create for himself a little bubble of peacefulness out on a hunting trip. 

It lasted until the wagon got there, and Blair and Jim were enlisted in the work to maneuver the big, smelly pinof into the back of the wagon. It took the work of eight Tau'ri and a careful rig of tarps and ropes, and Blair had rarely felt more accomplished in his life than when the heavy monster was finally loaded up. Jim wore a broad smile as he wiped the mess off his hands on the tarp and stepped away from the wagon.

"That wasn't that bad. Maybe next time we can help with the easy part, too," he said lightly. Blair huffed and nodded. His Sentinel clapped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, and Blair didn't remember to be worried about the grime that had probably been wiped off with it. After that, the wagon and the hunting party were headed back to the meet up point, and then, if the other teams had been likewise lucky, back to the village.

Blair and Jim were walking to collect their horses when something caught on the peripheral of Blair's vision. He stopped and looked off to his right, drawing Jim's attention. They both stared at a patch of tall blue-yellow field grass, some ten feet away. A pair of black ears and matching nose lifted over it, and the tawny, long-legged body pushed through a heartbeat later.

"You see that one, right?" Blair asked, quiet. He wasn't sure which answer he was hoping for, because Treyn hadn't been exactly clear on if the kayal were friendly. But Blair was pretty sure the weird wolf was glowing.

"See what, Chief?" Jim asked, sober and not at all teasing. 

"Ah crap," muttered Blair. The grass behind the kayal was still moving, another animal stalking through, and Blair pointed it out silently to Jim. 

"Okay, I see _that_ ," he said, catching Blair's wrist to pull him away from the shifting grasses. The kayal skittered out to them, nose intent on Blair's wrist where Jim held on to it, but not to bite. Jim kept looking down, like he felt it shoving at them.

"It's the kayal," Blair explained. "Can you at least feel her there?"

Jim nodded, distracted and attention divided between the skinny wolf and the valley grasses that were not being moved by wind. The grass at the edge of the trail flattened then and a big, heavy-toothed, bloody-brown, alien-looking jaguar with unnaturally glowing markings plodded out into the bare patch that had been trampled down by horses and wagons. It looked hurt, a limp noticeable in the left flank. And Jim still couldn't see it.

"Uh..." Blair stammered, not sure where to begin. The blurry view he had of the animals was fading as he started to stress about it. Suddenly, the jungle cat collapsed, letting out a startling, warped-sounding roar that spooked the horses some fifty yards away. Jim definitely heard it, his hand tightening around Blair's wrist.

"Ronon," he said, already pulling Sandburg into moving again. Blair nodded. 

"The cat looked hurt," he said. He let Jim approach the horses first, since he was taller and could almost look the animals in the eye to calm them after the noise. 

"No wolves though?" Jim asked. He held the not-a-horse mount still as Blair climbed into the saddle. 

"I didn't see any, but I was starting to slip," he admitted. Once he was settled, Jim jumped carefully up and they started off toward the wagon and the other riders. 

"There's no way you're going to teach that stuff to McKay if you can't even keep grounded when you need it, you realize that, right?" he asked. Blair grunted at him for it, the actual words incomprehensible from his own frustration at himself. Jim shrugged it off. "Just an observation."

"Not a helpful one," Blair replied. 

"Hey, Hale will probably pick it up quick enough," Jim said as a peace offering. "And you've got time."

Blair accepted it. "Do you know where we're going?"

"No," replied Jim. "But I'm thinking Treyn will know where to start. I can figure it out from there."

The Molanbe leader had questions but he didn't insist on having them answered immediately. They didn't have any to offer. He broke off from the group at the meeting point and led Jim and Blair off toward the foothill trails where he expected they would find the trapper team. 

As they rode, they tried reaching out to Ronon, Derek, and Stiles with the radios but there was no response. They did raise Sheppard, however.

"How's the hunt?" John asked into the open channel, his tone suspicious.

"Not going to plan, Colonel," replied Jim.

"I can hear that. Shouldn't you have eyes on Dex and the kids?" Sheppard asked. And that was fair, but Blair didn't like the logic smacking his wrists like that.

"We split up with different teams, Boss. They took the tasks up in the hills, we stayed with Treyn. And we have reason to believe something... Isn't right," said Jim, hedging due to distance and the fact that Treyn was only a few feet from him, openly wanting to know why Ellison was talking to himself. Blair waved to signal that they would answer _that_ later, too.

"Is this the kind of _reason to believe_ that means we should be heading your way?" John asked.

"Yes, Colonel," said Blair into the radio.

"Right. On our way then. Unless I hear otherwise, I'll set the system to look for Ronon's tracker," said Sheppard. "Keep me informed."

There was nothing to add or argue against and the communication was dropped in favor of settling Treyn's paranoia about his guests both talking to themselves. It was particularly troublesome for him considering he had just been taken away to help them look for their team members whom they had no tangible proof were missing. So Blair tried to explain how radios worked as the man led them out to the tracking trails.

~*~*~

They were farther out than the run had taken them the day before, but the terrain looked familiar for it. Once they got into the areas of the trail with more trees to interfere with smells and more rocks than dirt, Jim dropped down from the horse and moved ahead to better isolate his senses. Blair bit his tongue on advising, knowing Jim had the routine well in hand. He came to a four-way trailhead and knocked one off as an animal path but was still stuck on the other three.

“Which of these lead to traps?” he asked Treyn when he and Blair caught up. Treyn pointed to all four. That figured. Blair climbed down from the saddle and moved to help Jim narrow it down. Aside from the planet’s fragrant vegetation, the loose rock under their feet was largely porous and seemed volcanic, and given the color of the vegetation on the planet, probably had enough of a residual alkaline smell to further mask the humans.

"So I'm guessing scent is out," Blair said as he walked up beside Jim. The Sentinel nodded.

"There's too much of it to narrow down. Everything here is too new. And the terrain isn't great for tracking. Paths are pretty well defined," he replied.

"What do you hear?" Blair asked. Jim started to shake his head and then stopped. He considered it, frown in place.

"Even Dex is a Sentinel," he realized, reminding himself out loud. "They're in these hills somewhere, for a few hours."

"Near enough," Blair said. It was more to make noise, to be a familiar channel for Jim to focus on and tune out as he worked with his senses. "What're you thinking?"

"That no matter how far out they got, somebody should be able to hear us," said Jim. "Stiles definitely can if Dex is really hurt, as you said."

Blair accepted that and nodded. "Watch your ears," he said in warning. Jim gave the slightest nod and seemed to brace himself before Blair started shouting out for their teammates. There was no immediate response, but Jim caught Blair by the shoulder and pointed him toward one of the paths. He had likely used the familiar sound of Blair's voice to focus his other senses and must have found something to go on, so there was no argument. Treyn followed a safe distance behind with the animals as they climbed higher up the hillside, out onto cliffside edges and away from the relative safety of the tree cover. 

Before too long, Jim took the lead and kept Sandburg behind him, alert and on the defensive. "Someone's running."

There was no missing the service weapon in Jim's hand, but they kept pushing forward. Up ahead on the trail, whatever Jim heard had gotten louder and Blair could hear the sound of someone running over loose rocks and packed dirt. Then a teenager showed up, familiar enough but blond, not dark haired like Derek and Stiles.

"Orren?" Jim called out. The kid nodded and stopped where he was to instead wave them to him. 

"Help! Bring the _perqus_!"

“The what?” Jim looked from the kid up the trail back toward Treyn. The village leader was still on his horse-thing and was closing the distance between them with the other two daisy-chained behind. Jim tugged Blair to the side to let the locals lead the way. 

“Huh. That’s the perqus then,” said Jim, and Blair nodded. 

They followed the others up the hillside trails until they came to a larger clearing. Blair was exhausted for the hike after the long day so far, but there was a fair amount of adrenaline in his system to help him keep up. He jogged behind Jim and stopped when he did, then startled as Jim took off again, an unexpected dash toward a copse of funny-colored blue trees thirty yards away. Blair realized then that Dex was on the ground, along with Orren's father, a man named Minter who Blair had spoken with many times since their arrival at the village. He had been with them on the dunes as Sheppard and Ellison taught the kids how to surf. Now, neither of the men were moving as Jim and Treyn tried to rouse them.

"What the hell happened?" Jim demanded of Orren. Blair looked around at the ground as he approached the group, seeing the dirt and low grasses roughed up and trampled, but no sign of Derek and Stiles.

Treyn knelt beside the man, loosening the buttons on his jacket and trying to check his friend for injuries the same way Jim was looking over Ronon. He found a stack of papers in an inside pocket and pulled them out, away from an injury that was bleeding. The waxy paper was dark tinted at the edges and Treyn made a face at it, set it down to focus on the person instead. Blair picked them up, as keeping them from flying away while their owner was at least something useful to contribute. He caught sight of lettering that didn’t look either English or Lantean. It was curious, so he flattened the folded paper out, The pages under it quickly caught his attention, however. They almost looked like grainy photos and sketches, with random foreign symbols written over each of them.

"And where are the others?" Blair asked, distracted and trying unsuccessfully to split his attention. Orren frowned at him, shook his head. He still seemed shaky, too, and not from the running. Blair made himself look up at the boy from the papers.

"Gone. Men my father knew- they must have followed us up here. Or _something_... I don't know. But they said they had... They said the Council approved of them here, said they were sent to take the ring trespassers. And my father let them go. Told them Ronon was family and not to be taken and it started a fight-"

Orren went silent as his father started groaning, finally awake, though it probably didn't have much to do with Treyn's efforts of trying to tap on his face and chest in his earnest but ignorant intent of thumping him into awareness. Orren knelt next to Treyn then, completely derailed from telling them anything.

It had been about fifteen or twenty minutes since they had spoken with Sheppard, so the Puddlejumper uncloaking overhead probably shouldn't have been as startling as it was. Blair still wasn't used to flying ships that didn't have obvious propellers or audible jet engines. The perqus didn't like it either but at least they didn't run off or trample anyone. Blair folded the papers again to keep easier hold on them; Sheppard needed to see them.

When the hatch was open, Sheppard and a First Aid kit were the first out, Teyla and Daniel just behind him. Rodney stayed in the ship, at the helm, looking out at them from between the pilots' chairs but otherwise ready to get the ship back in the air again if needed. Blair stayed out of the way as Sheppard and Ellison started sorting out what to do about Ronon. Like Orren’s father, the man was bleeding and unconscious, and those were not good signs. Teyla disappeared and then came back with the stretcher board from the back of the Jumper. She and Daniel helped Jim get the big Satedan moved onto the board while Sheppard turned his attention to the others.

"Where are Stiles and Derek?" he asked, his voice remarkably restrained for the power of the glare. Blair instinctively stepped closer, a stand-in for Rodney as the other Guide was stuck thirty feet away in the Jumper.

"They took them, I told Blair-" said Orren. His father had gotten himself sitting up, his own injuries apparently still slowing him even though he was conscious, and the man glared back at Sheppard without any apparent concern for the Colonel's mood. Blair tapped the papers at John’s arm to get his attention.

“You’ve got to see these,” he said. John looked over at him and took the papers, unfolded them to the photos Blair had been looking at. Minter saw the papers and his dark expression only set in more stubbornly.

"You shouldn't have brought your trouble here," said Minter. "The Council gave clearance to get you to move along, so do it. Go."

John stepped forward, but not as a threat to the downed man. He looked instead to Treyn. "What is he talking about-"

"I certainly don't know," replied Treyn, shaking his head. "I've not been made aware of any news from the Council in months..."

John handed him the paper with the words on it. “Does this look like Council news then?”

"They would not speak with you. You're compromised by family," Minter told Treyn. He pulled on his son to make Orren help him to his feet. "Your sister is one of them. She's not on the list, but she and her mate travel with them."

This caught Teyla's attention and she stood from Ronon's side to stand between John and Treyn to listen more intently. She moved to read over her brother’s shoulder as he scanned the letter. John held the other blood-tinged pages over to her. They were photos, of a sort, with familiar faces on the top of the stack. Sheppard and Rodney were the first two of the batch that Blair had been able to recognize and one of the grainy photos looked like Major Lorne. Sandburg hadn't met any of the others yet, but based on John and Teyla's reactions, they were more of Atlantis' people.

"Excuse me?" Teyla asked Minter, clearly offended and angered. Blair realized then that all of their team was compromised just by their Guides alone and he started trying to focus, to ground himself again before things got out of hand and the Guides added to the overload. 

"We in our Authority as Council of the Eight Territories approve access to and removal of these Criminals from the villages and cities under our care," Treyn read off the paper John had given him, a growing anger in his voice. He looked up at Minter. “The Council had _no_ cause for this!”

"You're the one Domi saw at the ring, then?" John asked Minter. "You've been coordinating with the Genii?"

"What did you do?" Treyn demanded, a barely contained rage of his own building. "They are our guests!"

"Guests do not have bounties and prices on their heads. They are criminals! Crimes against the Genii, our _allies_ , who the Council has not forgotten in these years of isolation," replied Minton. "And the Council did not expect you would understand."

"The Genii are not what they pretend to be," interrupted Teyla. "You can't trust these-"

"Enough," growled John. He pulled the papers from Teyla and folded them up to be shoved in his pocket. "The Council wants us out, we'll collect our men and get out. Where were they taken?"

"Through the Ring, so you would follow," replied Minton. "We want no trouble in the village."

"How long ago?" Sheppard asked, looking to Orren. The teenager looked startled, almost divided between Treyn's anger and his father's. He stuttered as he shook his head.

"I- I don't know. It happened just after we got up here. It must have been hours ago," the boy said. Behind them, still monitoring Ronon, Jim swore. Teyla went back to help as Jim and Daniel started to move the fallen Sentinel to the Jumper. Sheppard looked to Treyn.

"Domi and Sonn are at the village to talk to you. We can give you a ride back, or you take care of these two," he said. But Treyn wouldn't be given long to think it over and he quickly shook his head. 

"Go. I will find out what happened here. Della or I will send word in a few days. This _will_ be fixed," he promised. John didn't argue and instead herded Blair away from the men. The Jumper had their gear all stowed, minus the big box of surfboards, which made for a little more room. It also explained why it had taken so long for Sheppard to get there if they had taken the time to unload it first. They crept carefully alongside the stretcher, leaving Jim and Teyla to get Ronon secured. Daniel and Blair followed Sheppard to the front and sat down behind the pilots' chairs. 

"What's happening?" Daniel asked. Sheppard was already working the ship through what passed for a preflight in a Puddlejumper.

"We're taking Ronon to Carson, then we'll track down the kids," said Sheppard. As an afterthought, he passed the folded papers back for Daniel to make sense of. "See if you can translate any of that."

"Not likely," muttered Daniel, but he took the photos anyway and started looking over the scribbles of writing all over the sides and back of the papers.

Jim showed up then at Blair's shoulder. "From what I can tell, he was shot twice. The wound on the leg, yes, but there's also a puncture and impact mark bruising on his arm. The Genii use drugged darts?"

"It wouldn't surprise me," replied John. "And after last night, if whatever they hit him with was used on Stiles, the kid’ll be out for a while."

"That means they can't be moving very fast," said Daniel.

"At least not very comfortably," added Rodney, frowning. "What happened? Why-"

"It's a bounty," Teyla offered up from the doorway. She pointed to the photos in Daniel's hand. "There are five different languages on there. We will have to be careful where we go until this is sorted out."

“We at least have an idea of what they’re after now,” John said.

“Well, that’s one way of looking at it, but I don’t think you’ve got much negotiation room,” said Daniel, holding up the rumpled photo of Sheppard’s face. Rodney snatched it out of his hand as John flew the ship. Then the Guide very definitely glared across the console at Sheppard.

"I already know what you're thinking and it's not happening," he said. John shrugged, not outwardly bothered.

"It could happen," he replied. Rodney amped up the glower and John rolled his neck to get the heat of it off the side of his face. "Look. One problem at a time. Okay?"

“You’re insane, so obviously it’s not okay,” returned Rodney. “Mentally unstable _solutions_ are still _insane_ , regardless of how many problems you’re dealing with at once. And our problems are currently compounded by a bounty very definitely associated with the Genii, who have gone to great lengths at this point to attempt to _kill you_. People who have expressed every intent to enslave _my_ brain for their own dysfunctional and nefarious, galaxy-dominating ends, and let’s not consider what their intent was for Elizabeth. In light of that _alone_ , following them to the gate address that they undoubtedly now know we have, to negotiate, or trade, or martyr, for either of our missing team, will not, _in fact_ , actually produce any kind of positive results. We already have every proof we need to know that they will lie and they will murder, and you think your idea will somehow actually work? It only gives them another body for target practice.” 

Rodney matched John’s stubborn, quiet determination with his own, even managed to express his irritation while keeping his voice down like he had been practicing or something. He got Guide points for that but Blair wasn’t sure how much of the argument was just Rodney and John and how much was their recent territorial streak from Sheppard coming online as a Sentinel. He definitely had valid points, and no matter what Blair had promised Jim earlier about not interfering in the teams’ working things through, Blair was siding with Rodney on this one.

“Well, we know _you’re_ not going, and in order to send Elizabeth, we’d have to send half the men included on the bounty, if those pictures are to be believed...” John began to argue, but there wasn’t a lot of conviction to it. Blair tilted his head as he watched the pair going back and forth. They _were_ arguing. But John was just bouncing ideas off of Rodney that he didn’t have fully formed yet. It was just their version of thinking out loud, brainstorming, though it seemed to be a great way to raise Rodney’s blood pressure. 

“What pictures?” Rodney asked. He flapped the one of John. “There’s more of _these_?”

In the chair beside Blair, Daniel helpfully sorted through the images until he found the one of Rodney and then handed just that one over. Blair blinked, surprised, as he so calmly and blatantly added to the man’s torment. Rodney stared at the new photograph, jaw slack. Then it was added to the one of John and folded lengthwise to make a good paper bat that the scientist wielded in warning. “No.”

“Well, if you’re just going to tell me _no_ , start coming up with better ideas then,” returned John. 

“I swear, if either one of you says another fucking word, I’m killing you, I don’t care who’s flying this thing,” came Ronon’s voice from behind them. He sounded groggy and definitely like a man in pain, but he was awake. Blair spun in the chair to confirm for himself as Teyla dropped back to check on him. Jim stayed out of her way and looked around the bulkhead wall to Blair. He nodded, silent confirmation that their patient was stable enough to be attempting to sit up as he was with Teyla’s help.

“Stay still,” Teyla cautioned, quiet. “Carson will need to check your wound.”

“Carson doesn’t need any more of my blood,” said Ronon. He leaned into Teyla but it was probably more comfort than actual support, because it looked like he was trying to stand up. “We need to go get the kids.”

John coughed politely. “Two against one,” he muttered at Rodney. And his Guide brought the rolled up papers down over his head.

“Is this a democracy now?” Daniel asked. “Because I’ve got a vote.”

“You’re not helping,” snapped Rodney. Daniel frowned at him.

“You don’t know what I was going to suggest,” he replied, but he didn’t sound very sincere about it.

“Colonel, return to Atlantis,” said Jim, speaking over them. He was using his military tone to cut through the attitudes in the Jumper just then. But there was no missing the fact that the Sentinel was pulling rank. Whether deference to organizational rank or wisdom, John straightened up just slightly and started pushing buttons on the center console to begin the dialing sequence for the stargate.

With the somewhat familiar symbols lit up, Sheppard reported, “Atlantis locked in, Captain.” 

~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ________  
> TW: Large game hunting, reference to internalized homophobia   
> \-------


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _______________________________  
> ~ See end notes for warnings ~  
> _______________________________

"Ow. Stop."

The complaint was too loud and added to the pain. Everything hurt. It was the worst all-over-everything-pain that Stiles had experienced yet in the month since he had come online. And that was counting the time he got his ass kicked by werewolves. Fuzzy memories suggested he had gotten his ass kicked this time, too, but tracking that far would require his head not hurt. 

Ellison called them migraines, when his senses just lit up all the dials and yanked the knobs off so bad he just wanted to go be sick somewhere. They weren't like any of the migraines Stiles had ever experienced, though. The _air_ hurt. Where was a zone out when he needed one? Stiles tried to bury his face under his arms but it wasn't working. His arm was stuck. He tried the other one and had better luck moving it, but it in a more general sense accomplished absolutely nothing. Everything was the same, but at least his arm blocked the light that had been sneaking in to assault his brain. He just had to worry about on-fire touch across his face, all of the sound, and the stifling smell of the humid air choking him. 

"Sti-" The almost recognized sound of his name grated off under the mechanical sound that jarred into his bones. It was Derek's voice. He heard a snippet of it again, tried to find it, now that he knew it was there. Stiles remembered the dials, but he couldn't focus to get them to work, everything in his head was too loud. 

"Help!" Stiles demanded, frustrated and trying to make a sound that he recognized, just to make some of the input behave even remotely normally. It almost worked, he could hear his voice, not just feel it, so he tried again. "Derek?"

Something grabbed Stiles' ankle and the first rush of the touch nearly made him scream. But then it settled, and the loud, almost painful register of the sensation let him bring his hearing into clearer focus, away from the buzzing and electrical, mechanical static surrounding him.

"-down. Stiles. Try to bring it down-" 

Derek's voice. Stiles wanted to yell at him. _No shit, dumbass, I'm trying and it's not working!_

But he didn't, because what was working was following Derek's voice to other sounds. The touch at his ankle didn't change, but the way Stiles processed it did, and he could handle it better, which helped him balance the touch against the feel of the wall behind him, of the grating of his clothes against his skin, his hair against his face. The pinpricks stopped, the fire calmed. Stiles shoved his leg over, looking for more contact, and stopped against something solid, human.

"I'm right here, okay? Stop screaming," said Derek. Stiles had to do a mental check on that. He wasn't screaming- no, he was. _Holy shit._ Everything hurt and he couldn't tell. He heard Derek tell him to breathe and tried to think about doing that one simple action that was supposed to be so innate to human nature. Instead, he listened, because his entire body was apparently on revolt and his brain was not involved in the riot. He listened and heard Derek's breathing, and then his heartbeat. It was too fast. Something was wrong with Derek. 

Stiles tried again to breathe and managed to bring in air, and with it, he could smell and taste the fear overriding something he recognized as uniquely Derek. Derek didn’t get scared, but the taste on the air in Stiles’ mouth was very definitely fear. The senses conjured up the emotions and it just made it louder, harder to ignore. Which meant it was something to focus on, something to follow, and that... actually worked. There was more of a trail to follow to get to Derek, and Derek was normal, so Stiles followed the breadcrumbs he had to get there. He reached out the hand he could move, away from his face and tried to focus on touch until he could get his hand on whatever he had shoved his leg into. He found a boot and from there jeans and a leg under the cloth.

“Stiles, open your eyes,” said Derek’s voice, way too loud and hardly understandable. It seemed like a bad idea, but Stiles tried it. The stabbing pain eased off as he adjusted, and he leaned into the weight at his side as he saw that it was Derek who he had grabbed onto. He sat across from him, their legs lined up, Derek's boot at Stiles' hip, and so far away. _Why-_

Stiles tried to move to crawl toward him, but his left arm was still stuck. It was frustrating and stressed his senses further when he knew - _knew_ \- Derek could fix it, he could get normal, he just needed someone to fix it...

"Stiles! Knock it off!" Derek ordered, and he sounded angry, Stiles tasted anger, and he stopped, because he was confused rather than because Derek had told him to. He squinted against the glare of light around him and tried to look at Derek. The man shook his ankle to further hold his attention. "You can't move your arm, stop trying before you get hurt."

The words blurred but Stiles followed their meaning and stayed still. "Everything is messed up-"

"You were drugged. Some kind of dart. They took us out when Ronon went after that guy from the village," said Derek. "Do you remember that? Yes or no, Stiles. Stay with me."

"I-" Stiles had to think about remembering anything at all and it wasn't easy to do through the spiking senses and the permanent headache and the queasy stomach.

"Stiles... You can hear me, right? Can you track me?" And Derek kept his voice quiet and kept talking to give him something _to_ track and focus on. "They want us out of the village. He said Sheppard and McKay aren't welcome, so we aren't."

There was something at least familiar about that, but it was like thinking through fog. "Where's Ronon?"

"I don't know. They left him. Whatever they hit us with, it's not even half what the Hunters use. I saw them dump him back there, but I still went down. I don't know where we are. We're moving. Not usually a good thing," said Derek. Stiles slowly processed the too-loud information, and used both his Guide's voice and his words to try to make better sense of their surroundings and his perception of it. He couldn't move his arm because his wrist was locked down to the corner between the wall and the floor. He couldn't feel metal from handcuffs, but there was some kind of material around his wrist. It wasn't cloth or leather, either. It didn't feel natural at all. Stiles squinted at the free wrist, tugged his shirt sleeve up by rubbing a bit on Derek's leg so he could see the problem, but all he saw was a simple band and a few metal rings. Derek showed the one on his wrist, too.

"It looks fake, but I can't bite through it. I tried," he said. "It just closes back up."

"What the hell, man," Stiles complained, still foggy through the sensory input around him. "We need Ronon... Or Shepp."

Derek nodded. "Be quiet about him," he said. "The guy from the village told them you're Sheppard's kid. That's why we got kicked out."

If it didn't hurt so much, Stiles would have laughed. Instead, he closed his eyes and shoved himself back against the wall, pulling enough to get Derek as much in his space as possible. Derek's hand rubbed at him, under his pant leg, up his shin, down his ankle, and he kept talking, quiet and even. It gave Stiles something to hang on to and he tried to focus the other senses into a similar baseline. Stiles didn't even register what Derek was saying, he just hid in the sound like it was a tunnel that could force the rest of him to level out.

After a while of working at it, he could comprehend the size of the box they were in, and that it was moving, though he couldn't figure out how. Everything was smooth and even, except for the jarring, unnatural whirring and buzzing of whatever was powering it. He couldn't hear outside of it. Slotted ports over their heads allowed in light and air, but it was hot and humid and stuffy; a box was still a box. There were only two people in the box, sharing air even though it wasn't how Stiles would have preferred to. 

Stiles tried to focus on Derek, doing the work to sort through sounds around his Guide's voice until he could hear his heartbeat. Derek still seemed off. He was scared. Stiles was, too, so he couldn't fix it; he could barely fix his own senses. The whole _see alien planets_ and _explore the wrong galaxy_ scheme was suddenly a very different kind of _real_. Everything felt really close in their moving metal box and Derek tried to pull his attention again.

"We're fine, Stiles. Don't screw it up. We stick together if you stay conscious," he pointed out, because he was _great_ at pep talks. But he wasn't playing around, and it added to the annoyance and frustration Stiles felt at being so close and yet unable to just crawl against his side and get his senses centered despite whatever they had put in his system. And it helped him focus on that, so it worked out. The panic was dodged, in favor of anger, and Stiles was still spiky but mostly able to handle the pain when the gate-wall next to him finally opened. 

The sunlight was blinding and Stiles curled over his knees. Whatever held his wrist let go and Stiles clapped his hands over his eyes as he tried to adjust. Threats and guns of some weird variety were involved and Stiles managed to crawl out, only to lose his breakfast on some asshole's boots once he got out onto the ground. It made him feel better for morale reasons, but he otherwise wasn't doing great. 

Derek was let out and Stiles caught his hand as he dropped to the ground. It made their guards unhappy but Stiles was able to get a mental hold on the dials and he lined himself up close next to Derek trying to ignore the orders to step back.

"He's sick," said Derek, annoyed at the general manhandling and working to keep Stiles behind him as the guards tried to pull them away. "Leave him alone-"

A guard stepped back and tapped a baton at the back of Derek's thigh and it lit up and crackled, sending him to his knees as quickly as a Hunter's baton. Stiles could smell the electricity and was close enough to feel the static and he backed off fast, arms raised harmlessly, to keep it from happening again. There was no way he could handle it if it took Derek down even an inch.

There was no more room for argument after that and the weird bracelets were turned into handcuffs with a short locking chain between the metal loops on them. Stiles put one foot in front of another, trying not to be sick again as they were escorted down into an underground bunker that then revealed itself to be an entire underground city. It was bigger than Atlantis, built in a tall and wide cavern that had probably been an aquifer at some point, exposed rock walls everywhere and far, far overhead after the hike down from the surface.

But it was darker and cooler, which was a slight relief. The air felt weird, prickly, and Stiles was actually glad when they locked him and Derek in a cell where the air didn't move around as much. 

"Water," Stiles asked without thinking as the guards shut them away. But there was no answer as the squad left. It felt like they had walked a mile, the only bright side to that being the fact that physically moving and random dark hallways had helped him find something like a workable baseline. He was still feeling like he had eaten three day old sushi and very dehydrated, but the sensory spikes had gotten less drastic. 

The second the jail cell gate was closed and their guards were gone, Derek was in Stiles' face, his hands on his cheeks and making him look at him. He dragged his thumb over Stiles' brow and down, checking his eyes and pupil response. 

"Dude. I'm sick," said Stiles, frustrated with the realization as much as scared. "I go to another _planet_ , in another _galaxy_ , and I get _sick_."

"No shit, Sherlock," replied Derek. He let go of Stiles' face, apparently satisfied, but Stiles just leaned into him until he had to loop his arms over Stiles' head because of the handcuffs and hug him. "You _smell_ sick. You had the brine yesterday. Then whatever they hit us with. The book wasn't kidding. No drugs, no drinks. Your system is too sensitive."

"Like, the opposite of you," Stiles grumbled into his shoulder.

"Lightweight," replied Derek, taunting despite his annoyance. He ruffled Stiles' hair and then rested his hands at the back of his neck. Whether it was to help Stiles balance out with skin contact or checking him for a fever, Stiles didn't know or care. It kind-of worked. He closed his eyes and could have fallen asleep standing up if they had been literally anywhere else. Stiles anchored in on the sound and feel of Derek's heartbeat and tried to settle himself. 

It was a few minutes later before the door opened again. Stiles stood up and tried to untangle but Derek didn't let him go far. He tugged Stiles back against his chest and crossed his hands in front of him, like there were no weird handcuffs and they were perfectly cozy, standing around in their _jail cell_. He was breathing very intentionally, Stiles noticed, and it took him a moment to catch on that he was trying to keep Stiles grounded despite the drugs. So Stiles took his lead and slouched back in his space, squinted out at the obnoxious nerd in the olive-colored uniform on the other side of the bars. He didn't look like much, curly fluffy hair that said he wasn't one of the grunts who wore the hats all the time, different patches on his shoulders, so he was probably some kind of important. He also had the advantage of jail cell keys and poison dart guns that could apparently fuck with Stiles' entire existence. Stiles was good with staying far away from the cell gate.

"Which one of you is Stiles?" their jailer asked. Derek's arms tightened just a little over his, in what was probably a hint, so Stiles kept his mouth shut. Maybe the guy would think they didn't know his language. The man stood there, staring at them, patient, though increasingly annoyed. He waited them out another minute before he sighed.

"Alright. Let's try again. Start at the beginning," he said. "My name is Ladon Radim. I am the chief scientist for the Genii people. And I have been told one of you is Stiles. And that you are a Guardian team."

Stiles started to stand up then, a little bit angry at that news being out. Derek held him back.

"Is that why you poisoned us _? Trying_ to kill us?" Stiles demanded anyway. Radim looked appropriately confused.

"Poison? There was nothing-"

"Whatever you used to knock us out. Poison. It nearly killed him on the way here," said Derek, cautious. Stiles realized he had to be listening to the stranger, the good ol' human lie detector trick, and settled down. But he stood up straight, back against Derek rather than leaning on him where he might slow either of them down. He tried not to think too hard on the _nearly killed him_ part.

"I assure you that wasn't the intent at all. The men just needed your cooperation to get you through the ring and you were not inclined," replied Radim. Like the man had jokes. Stiles glared at him. Radim clasped his hands in front of himself and looked back at Stiles directly. "Do you need a doctor then, Stiles?" 

" _No_ , I need water. And to be _not_ here," said Stiles.

"The water we can do, the other may take a little longer," replied Radim. "It will depend on when your father comes to get you."

"What is this, daycare?" Stiles returned. Derek had warned him, but hearing that he had been right rankled more than he wanted to admit. "I've got bad news for you-"

The argument was cut short by Derek's hand over his mouth. He pulled the rest of Stiles against him again.

"When is that supposed to be?" Derek asked.

"Give us your identification codes for the stargate and it could certainly go a lot faster," said Radim. He shrugged. "Otherwise, I would suggest you settle in. Colonel Sheppard doesn't know where you are yet."

"Yes, he does," said Stiles. "We pulled the address from the 'gate this morning."

There was a long pause as the man on the other side of the bars considered what Stiles told him. Then he nodded like he had made up his mind about something. "That may change things. It will depend, as I said, on Sheppard. In the meantime, is it safe to assume you're as proficient with the technology of the Ancients as he is?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Stiles asked, well beyond _annoyed_ now. Radim curbed a frustrated sigh and tried again.

"When we were in Atlantis, there were specific instruments and parts of the city, really, that Dr. McKay had access to that Dr. Weir could not. There was a genetic marker of some kind that the technology was sensitive to. For instance, Colonel Sheppard can fly the small ships..."

"No," said Stiles, even as Derek talked over him. "He has the marker, but he can't fly the ships. Sheppard's the only one on our team who can."

Stiles dug an elbow into the stupid werewolf's gut for the obvious betrayal. There was _no_ helping the _bad guys_! What the _hell_ was Derek doing? But Derek ignored him.

"We will of course need proof of this, while you are here," Ladon said. He didn't seem to trust either answer. "From both of you."

"Fine, but in the meantime, we want food and water and blankets," replied Derek. "And don't use those darts on Stiles again. You _will_ kill him. Then you don't get anything you want from anybody."

The Genii scientist nodded. "That's certainly a reasonable point, and it will be factored in, but it will still depend on the level of cooperation we can expect going forward, you understand. So I suggest, then, that you... Relax your stance and work with me. It would solve multiple problems, quite painlessly."

"Oh, fuckoff," muttered Stiles. But Derek still had him penned in and just hugged his arms down tighter. He didn't answer the man that time, and Radim seemed to accept it as some kind of dismissal. He promised them food and water would be brought in and then left the room. Stiles shoved Derek's arms up so he could step away finally, more because he wanted to yell at him than because he was stable enough to stand on his own.

"What'd you tell him that for?" Stiles demanded, quiet only because his ears and brain were more demanding than he was just then. "We're not helping them-"

"We don't know them," replied Derek. "Or what they're capable of. And the only way we find out is waiting around for Sheppard to figure out what they want. We don't have to _help_ them to avoid picking fights."

Stiles scowled at him. That didn't seem like how it was supposed to work. Derek waved around at their cell. "It's not exactly the Ritz. And it's not going to get better. They're just... More hunters. You want to get dead faster, or wait a while on that? From what I saw just getting you here, it won't take much." 

Stiles stared at him, held up a hand in imitation of a werewolf's claws. " _You're_ saying _be nice_ to the bad guys?"

Derek rolled his eyes, like he had some kind of intelligence high-ground just then. "At least until you can tell the difference between when you're yelling and when you're whispering again, yeah. It would be a good idea. They know you're a Guardian but that's it. Let's keep it that way until we know you can run, yeah?"

He had a point but Stiles didn't want to admit it. "I'm not high. I'm not seeing weird colors or anything," he said, offering up a mild defense. "But it reeks in here. My skin is crawling. Hurts. This place is all wrong."

"Yeah. And it's a maze. I can't track our way out. So..." Derek trailed off, his point obvious. 

"So we be nice to the bad guys," said Stiles. Derek nodded.

" _Besties_."

Stubborn, Stiles leaned back against the rock wall of the cell and eased gingerly down to the floor. It was cold, at least, so the place had that going for it. But the air felt slimy and staticky, so the cold didn't move the needle in anyone's favor. Derek moved to stand over him, looking down at him like he expected Stiles to keel over and die any second. Stiles kicked his boots half-heartedly.

"I think I liked it better when you were angry all the time," he grumbled. Derek raised an eyebrow and the corner of his lips tugged up.

"Right. Well, when the others get here, I'll just catch the Daedalus back to the SGC with Daniel then," he replied. Stiles brought the heel of his shoe down on Derek's steel-guarded toes in protest to the threat but careful not to hurt himself about it. He did give up then and reached forward to grab Derek's leg and relocate his annoying body closer so he could lean on it.

~*~*~

By the time someone brought food, Stiles' headache was a constant stabbing pain that coincided with the buzzing of the weird lights in the room. The concern that they shouldn't eat what was brought to them was shrugged aside because he was already stuck with the effects of being drugged, so if they really wanted to piss him off, it would be on their heads when Derek removed them. Stiles stayed sitting on the floor against the wall as Derek went up to the gate to accept the bowls. It took a little juggling because of the short chain connecting the bands of fake-leather at his wrists, but between him and Radim, they balanced it out and Derek carried the food back to Stiles.

"Hey! Can these come off? I don't know how to eat with- are we just supposed to drink it, or?" Stiles asked. Radim flinched and waved his hand as if to push something down.

"You don't have to yell-"

"I'm not-" Stiles looked to Derek for confirmation and the man just nodded and shrugged.

"I told you, the drugs in the dart screwed him up," Derek told Radim. "Being in here is making it worse. But he hasn't had anything to eat or drink since this morning, either."

The Genii scientist frowned at them. "We haven't had a Guardian team in the city in my generation. Chief Cowen knew of one when he was a boy, but they are long dead. I'm afraid we don't know what you need."

"Not these," said Stiles helpfully, holding up his wrists. Derek was right; the man was an easy target and they could work with what they had. He intentionally didn't check his volume. "And it's too loud down here. And cold. And someone died in here, I can smell it."

That seemed to unnerve the scientist as much as he was curious. "This... We were told Colonel Sheppard is a Guardian. Is this something that he, too, would experience?"

"Do you go around drugging people out of habit?" replied Derek. Radim shrugged it off. It wasn't like they expected anything different. Derek finally nodded.

"His senses are just as strong as Stiles' are, so yes," he reported. "The darts could kill him. Being underground in a city like this, at least in here, is... Bad."

Stiles stopped trying to figure out how to hold the bowl and eat with a spoon when he could only hold his hands about three inches apart from each other at a time. He looked up at the scientist outside the gate. He was aware that he was still a kid, at least back home, and even on the team; maybe people treated him fair, but he was still a kid. And Stiles played it up for all he could.

"Wait. Is that what you _want_? Are you trying to kill us?" he asked. Because he could still be a scared kid, and Ladon Radim reeked of stubborn insecurities. "We didn't do anything-"

"Colonel Sheppard did," said Radim.

"So did you guys," replied Stiles. "You attacked the city. And when the wraith came down, you worked together and there was a truce. Remember? It's what we've got on the books. We're supposed to be allies..."

Radim kept wincing, but Stiles couldn't tell if it was because of his words or his volume. There was too much static between the walls, mechanical noises, clanking, grinding, and the residual buzz of voices for him to hear himself and keep his own voice consistent. And in terms of conning an idiot adult who deserved it, he figured it could only help. 

"Stiles is right, you know," Derek added. "The Director is just going to look at this as a violation of the alliance. You won't get what you want that way."

"We didn't do anything to you guys," Stiles insisted, aiming to be as annoying as possible. He was only capable of half his usual brain-power just then but he was confident he could still work his way around the Genii.

"What we need is the capability of working with Lantean technology. And until we have that, we can't learn how to replicate it as others have. So regardless of what the Director thinks, allies or not, we have a right to the information they refuse to share. However necessary to attain it."

"What the hell does that have to do with us?" Derek asked. Ladon tilted his head as he looked in at them, like a confused kid visiting the zoo for the first time.

"Originally, nothing at all. We were looking for the men we knew could fly the ships. But the Molanbe could arrange to provide your location and not your father's. So if you can work the technology, you'll do, until other arrangements are made," said Ladon.

Stiles was getting a little pissed off all over again. "Sheppard's not my dad. I don't know who fed you that bullshit-"

"Minter and his wife made the arrangements with us," said Ladon, like his confusion made his version of the story irrefutable truth and Stiles was lying about his parentage. "On behalf of the Molanbe."

"That's nice, but they lied to you," replied Derek. "We only met Sheppard a month ago. He's not family."

The Genii scientist frowned at them, blinking slowly as he processed the newsflash. "But you can operate the Lantean technology?"

Stiles thumped his head against the wall and glared up at the rock ceiling. "Yes, but that doesn't mean-"

"Then it's fine. Whether they send us Sheppard or not, we have one descendent to work with. We can narrow down the active differences with your help in the meantime," interrupted Radim. 

Annoyed, Stiles turned an accusing stare on Derek then, just to be sure he saw what he started with his _be nice to the bad guys_ theory. Now they had to _help_. Or, more specifically, _Stiles_ had to help. And he had a bowl of alien food in his lap that he couldn't eat because of weird alien handcuffs and everything was just getting worse like a snowball collecting mud as it rolled down hill with no brakes.

The panic hit first and then the zone out, with Stiles chasing the sound of dripping water from a faucet somewhere not in the room with them. There were a lot of sounds in the city, everything loud and a lot of it completely unidentifiable. Stiles got lost in his head for entire minutes but it seemed like a blink.

When he snapped out of it, he saw Derek leaning over him, and then another face he didn't recognize.

"That's normal for these?" the stranger asked. Stiles shoved the man away and leaned into Derek's space.

"It's not normal, it's what happens when there's too much sensory input and they get stuck," said Derek, his tone a warning that no one else in the room would know to listen to. "I told you, this place is too loud, there's too many smells that make it hard for him to breathe-"

"The air is wrong," Stiles insisted, still catching his breath. He didn't know how to explain, but the air triggered every one of his senses and it was hard enough to turn that down all on its own. "It hurts."

Derek rested his hand to Stiles' face to give him a barrier against the air and contact he could anchor on, and Stiles focused on the touch to try to balance everything else out. He heard the voices above him but they were just noise for a minute. Derek's made sense, but he said short words, _yes_ or _no_. He was all anger but he didn't move from where Stiles leaned against him.

"I have to agree with the boy. This place may kill him," said the stranger. "Until we know more, he is clearly not safe down here."

And that was apparently all it took. Suddenly Derek was helping Stiles sit up, somebody else was helping stand him up, and then shoving him to a stretcher that didn't look at all comfortable. Stiles would rather walk than chance it but Derek nudged him toward the help. Derek could at least trust his vision so Stiles went with it. 

The stretcher was bustled out by a full team of soldiers, and Stiles had no idea where they had come from, but suddenly he couldn't see Derek anymore. He could hear him arguing with Radim, though. 

Stiles zoned out again trying to listen for Derek following him.

~*~*~

There was no telling how long he had been under for but the ticking of a grandfather clock finally made it through the flashing static and Stiles climbed carefully back to awareness. He couldn't hear Derek when he managed it, though. That was distressing for a moment until he realized all the other things he couldn't hear anymore. The echoing, clanking, mechanical, painful gritty city sounds were gone. There were birds and tree sounds, wind with actually breathable air, but he was indoors and not being hit directly by any of it. Over his head were exposed wooden beams, supporting a plank ceiling, all hand carved with blade marks and spider webs in the corners. 

It was bright in the room, too, but it was sunlight. There was no electric buzz at all, no lamps or even light switches on the wall. It looked a lot like the Molanbe houses, but it wasn't cluttered with tools and materials and projects. This place was painted plank, bare walls and rough hewn furniture, blanket racks but not much in the way of pillows. The bed under him was lumpy and smelled moldy. Stiles rolled carefully to his side and tried to figure out if he needed to be sick or not as his head tried to catch up with the sudden rush of _nothing_ after the comparative force of the _everything_ that he had zoned on.

The stranger in the long coat stood in the doorway with Ladon Radim, the both of them looking concerned, to their credit. They were still creepers, but at least Stiles didn't feel like he was about to be preyed on by vampires or something. He asked for water and the guy in the lab coat disappeared.

"Dr. Sayn will bring you food and water. As long as you will be awake to try it," said Radim

"Yeah, that would be great, wouldn't it?" replied Stiles. He pushed himself gingerly upright, sat himself on the edge of the bed. "Where's Derek? I need him."

"He is in the city. He'll stay below until we have a better understanding of... Your situation. Why you reacted that way," said Radim.

"We told you, you poisoning me kinda doesn't go over so great," said Stiles. Radim nodded.

"So he said. But there's nothing in that formula that should cause this. We've used it safely for generations," he replied. He shrugged. "And all we have is Mr. Hale's word that your reaction was from something that has never had this effect on anyone we've ever tested it on."

Stiles rolled his eyes and slumped forward just enough to glare at the floor and hug his aching gut. "You've never tried it on a Sentinel. I get sick easy. That's what happened."

"Well, in the meantime, you can stay up here, in quarantine until we're sure that's all it is," the man said. "It can't be spreading to the city. Or your friend."

"Guide, okay? He's my Guide. I need him. He makes this stuff stop. I can't make the Sentinel thing work without his help," Stiles told him. He didn't want to be helpful and truthful just then, but he wanted Derek back, and his head was still groggy and pained enough to try working at Radim's sympathy.

"And that's fine, but you don't have to make it work. You just have to get through whatever these fits are. When we know you aren't contagious, other arrangements can be made," said Ladon. The doctor showed up with the food and a pitcher then. He was wearing gloves as he handed over a cup of water and set the food on a side table.

Derek or no Derek, Stiles was exhausted. He made himself shut up long enough to drink half the pitcher of water, then reached for the food bowl. The water tasted funny, with a metallic, mineral taste, but it was water. And the food was easier to figure out this time. The chain was gone from between his wrists, though the annoying bands were still there. He would argue later. When he didn't feel like keeling over and passing out for real sleep rather than an all-systems-fired zone out. Stiles barely made it through the bowl of soup before he was flopped out on the uncomfortable bed again, asleep and oblivious to the alien world.

~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _______________________________________________  
> Tw: Descriptions of Nausea & migraines, references to poisoning/drugging, panic attack, stiles whump!  
> _______________________________________________


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _______________________________  
> ~ See end notes for warnings ~  
> _______________________________

It was kind of Sandburg to have kept his mouth shut about it so far, but in addition to the building migraine, Jim was feeling the responsibility as Sheppard made the report to Elizabeth about why Dex came back bloody and how their morning had gone, in general. It had been Ellison’s call to split up, and before that, he had backed the Lt. Colonel when the locals had suggested going hunting at all. They had all misread a situation as safer than it was. But Jim knew his vote had outweighed the others. It didn't matter now for anything, other than it necessitated caution going forward, which Jim had spent two days trying to browbeat Blair into loosening up on. It was an annoying reminder that even he couldn't see everything, which was, of course, why he had a Guide to watch his back. It still risked the kids and shouldn't have happened.

They stood in the office off the gateroom, with AR-1 and Carson Beckett lurking because there was visible blood involved. The would-be patient who should have been most concerned about the blood loss, however, didn't want to waste the time. It was a familiar stubbornness. But Jim was old enough now to know Dex was being stupid; they were going to need him later, and putting off help while the adrenaline was still pumping would only slow down the team's ability to respond. But Ronon Dex was not American military, a volunteer for Sheppard's city, not someone beholden to the politics of the Sentinel Program, and not someone Ellison could order around. That was up to Col. Sheppard and he had bigger problems at the moment than to pick a fight with a stubborn alien.

The photo pages were spread out in front of Elizabeth Weir across the desk so she could see all seven faces. Each of them were trained on the Puddlejumpers and had been off-world in them in the last six months. 

“I guess, in a way, it’s lucky the city shut us out while you were gone,” the Director said. “All gate activity was stopped weeks ago. We could have been worse off than we are if you hadn’t found this.”

“We’re still down two men because of it,” Sheppard pointed out. “And based on the ‘gate traffic, we know where they went.”

“Which means we know where to find them,” said Dex. Sheppard nodded his agreement but he very noticeably didn’t expand on the man’s objective.

“We _don’t_ know where to find them, though,” McKay pointed out. “We know the planet they’re on. The _where_ gets fuzzy after that, and the _how_ to get to them gets murkier still when you consider the fact that our instruments will not penetrate their radiation hot zones. And their entire city is underground and saturated in radiation. We can put people on the planet, but we can’t find them, is what I’m saying.”

“These are technically allies... are there different factions? What do we know about them? About what they want with this?” Daniel Jackson asked. 

“The gene that flies the ships,” said Dex. He tapped on the page with Sheppard’s face on it. “That’s why they took the kid they thought was Sheppard’s. Minter and them were arguing about who they could or couldn’t take.”

“Oh, great,” muttered Sheppard. He rubbed at his neck, up near his ears, and stepped sideways into his Guide’s space. Like he had apparently caught the same headache Jim had been fighting since they walked out of the Jumper. “The Genii don’t like me any, Elizabeth. We gotta get them out of there.”

The Director nodded. “Agreed. And I’m open to ideas. Any team we send for negotiation will just be taken. We already know that with them. They’ve done it before. So we can open the conversation on radio frequency to find out what it is they want. But I don’t know how we can get underground.”

“We can’t get there,” insisted Rodney. “If they’re not underground, we can send the Daedalus. It’s still here, right? Send them to look for their transmitters.”

“Transmitters?” asked Blair. His heart rate spiked. “What transmitters?”

Sheppard stared up at the ceiling for a moment before seeking out his sunglasses to hide behind. Rodney looked between Sheppard and Beckett and Sandburg. “Subcutaneous transmitters... The emitter we used to track you and the Colonel back...” The light bulb seemed to click on then and the scientist seemed to physically droop. “They don’t have transmitters yet.”

Carson nodded, looking pale. “The Daedalus wasn’t exactly stocked for our purposes. An’ with the inventory when we got back, I dinnae have the time before ye left again.”

“Which, just for the record, the city’s not exactly pleased that we all left at once,” Sheppard said. The stress showed in his voice. “It's been nonstop noise since I showed up.”

“Where’s your radio?” Jim asked. “I’m getting static but I can tune it out. Mostly.”

“I wanted to know what the static was,” replied John. He shrugged, fished around in a pocket, pulled out the earpiece. “This just means I don’t understand her.”

“Oh, you’re all brushed up on the Latin then?” Daniel asked, sarcasm quietly contained. 

“The city’s fine, John. Leave her to Zelenka so we can sort out how to get the boys back,” said Elizabeth. From her tone, she expected that was the end of it.

“She’s back to Lantean, that’s how I know she’s _pissed_. So I’m not great at it, no,” John said as an aside to Daniel, quick and quiet and sneaking it in like he expected not to get caught. Jim stifled an annoyed sigh. Elizabeth triggered her own radio mic as she glared at Sheppard.

“Major Lorne, please check in at my office, now,” the Director said. She looked from Sheppard to Beckett then. “Doctor, if you would please take care of this team. They are not allowed near the stargate until they pass your clearance and you have confirmed that every one of them has a working transmitter. I’ll discuss our options with Major Lorne in terms of available personnel and you lot can get back to this when I know everyone involved is fit for duty.”

"We are fit!" Dex argued, ignoring the bloody leg.

"Ronon, we are not sending a team blindly into an underground city. Not against the Genii. There’s too many of them and not enough of _us_ ,” said Elizabeth. Teyla stood up from her chair then, effectively quieting Ronon’s argument. 

“If they went to all the work to put out a bounty, Chief Cowen will be in contact soon enough. From what I know of him, the man is nothing if not... lazy. He plans before he makes someone else act. Now that the bounty did not go to plan, he will take the time to salvage what he can of it. And he won't set to waste the opportunity the Molanbe have handed him as a result of it,” said Teyla.

“What if it’s _not_ Cowen, Teyla?” asked Sheppard. “That’s what I’m worried about. If it’s Kolya, I need to be back through the ‘gate while the rest of you figure something out. We can’t leave a couple of kids there-”

“Kolya was exiled from Genea, he told us himself,” replied Teyla. “They wouldn’t have been working with the address from Genea if this was Kolya’s doing.”

“Yeah, well, he could _lie_ ,” replied Sheppard. “It kind of fits in with the whole murdering and city-stealing vibe.”

There were matching glares from both Teyla and Elizabeth at that, while McKay seemed to turn a shade murderous himself. The scientist looked from Sheppard to Elizabeth. “Can we just agree _now_ that we’ll figure something out that _doesn’t_ involve martyrdom and self sacrifice over a possibly entirely disconnected theory about a bounty? This is a stupid stopgap - and that’s all it is - and it just hands him another hostage, technically two as I would be morally compelled to go with you, at least in order for you to be of any use to the kids at all, and I don’t actually feel like watching anybody die this week, alright?”

“Alright, then give me a better plan,” returned John.

“We’ll work on it!” Rodney waved his hands, frustrated but valiantly trying to keep his voice down better than Sheppard was.

“The _better plan_ is medical care,” interrupted Elizabeth. “ _Now_. And Daniel and I will work on this while you are all cleared. And anyone who argues will cool off in the brig until they can reprioritize, am I clear?”

Jim chalked it up to being overly tired from the day so far, but the woman's no-nonsense tone and firm stare reminded him very strongly of his ex-wife in very comforting ways. Very inconvenient ways, really. Sandburg would just tell him he was looking for something familiar, someone else he could trust, in a foreign place, and he wouldn't exactly be wrong. Not having to ride herd on AR-1 for a few hours would be a heaven-sent vacation after a month, and Elizabeth Weir had just sent half of them out the door with the doctor. And it actually _worked_. Jim bit his tongue on thanking her. Instead, he caught Blair by the elbow and hurried him out of the office. Lorne passed them on their way down the stairs, bound for his chance to strategize with the Director and Jackson. 

"I saw that," Blair hissed at Jim, under his breath, as they trailed well behind the others bound for the infirmary. Jim glanced at him but didn't take the bait. So Blair stopped them at the base of the stairs and pulled him aside. 

"Two things, real quick," his Guide said, still quiet. Jim sighed and crossed his arms, because they had other things to worry about just then that wouldn't involve Sandburg whispering. 

"What's that, Chief?"

"First, you and me can help when they give us something to do, but this isn't our turf. So we're on the sidelines, as I see it, and I'm not going to mess with the chain of command BS. John and Elizabeth can handle this. We follow _their_ orders. Sound good?"

Jim nodded his agreement with that. "Tau'ri or not, alien kidnappings are not our area of expertise, agreed."

"Good," said Blair. Then his conversational quiet got significantly quieter. "Then second? You made the face. We don't make the face at the bosses. We have had this discussion before, man."

And there it was. Jim rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you listened to me real well on that discussion, didn't you?" he replied. Ellison shook his head. "And we are not having this discussion _now_."

"Are you sure? Because that was definitely the face," replied Blair, smug and annoying. Jim managed a dry, unamused smile back before he answered by turning and resuming course for the infirmary. He had _not_ made any _faces_ and Sandburg was more exhausted than Ellison. And he was _very_ exhausted and the static from the city around him wasn't helping after a few days without it. When Blair caught up again, Jim snagged hold of his hand to ground on and Blair took the hint and stayed close.

They followed the others to the medical wing and Blair made Jim take a seat on one of the patient beds. Ronon was being seen to, complaining about it but allowing it, and Teyla stood at the end of the bed, looking concerned. McKay had herded Sheppard to an out of the way spot to wait for whatever check-over the doctor was supposed to do for them, but the scientist was giving the Lt. Colonel an earful on why there would be no horse trading with the Genii. It boiled down mostly to "Because I said so" reasoning, but Sheppard stood by and let the man get it out of his system.

Sandburg hopped up to sit on the edge of the bed beside Jim. "What's this stuff about transmitters? Like, specifically, the subcutaneous part," the Guide asked, quiet. Jim shrugged.

"It's a tracker. It's how they found you back on Earth with the Patriots thing," he replied. He watched it in action, sort of, seeing the Jumper HUDs pinpoint all the potential frequencies similar to the one programmed into the computer as Sheppard's ID. "But that's all I know about it."

It caught the attention of the Colonel and he and Rodney wandered closer. 

"It's a chip, about the size of a needle-point. And they just... jab it in where it won't work its way out. So when stuff like this happens, someone can find us," Sheppard said.

"What, like nanotech?" Sandburg asked. McKay rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, just step nanotech forward twenty years from what you think nanotech is, sure," he replied. "It's harmless. It's not reprogrammable. The robots aren't going to take over your internal organs. Nobody can hack the chip. It just exists to let us know where you are when there's trouble. And that includes in the city now, as long as Zelenka hasn't screwed up the sensors in the last few months." Rodney seemed to reach a new level of annoyed and looked over at Sheppard. "I haven't been home in like three months. We get the kids back, you are grounded just so I can catch up on work."

The Colonel shrugged off the threat. "Not my call. Talk to the bad guys."

"How about I _not_ be the one to do that?" replied Rodney.

Beside Jim, Blair radiated nervousness. Apparently the hippy hadn't signed up for a tracking chip. After years of his friend wearing an ankle monitor, one that followed him around from the inside seemed like a good idea to Jim. For the right reasons this time, too. He nudged at Blair's shoulder. "It'll be fine. I watched it work before."

"Sorry, a little wary of the US military tracking me wherever I go for the rest of my life," muttered Sandburg. He looked over at Sheppard. "No offense."

The Colonel nodded but seemed to shrug it off. "None taken. But you don't leave the city again until it happens. So that's your call."

Jim agreed with Sheppard on that, too, but he didn't have to say so. If Blair was going to go around reading his faces, he could just read Jim's face on this one, too; no more risking their lives and wasting time when there were perfectly effective shortcuts. They still had five years to go and any advantage was worth it. Blair nodded his head.

"Oh, yeah, I'll do it. I'm just saying, it's a risk. In my experience, anyway," he replied.

"So far as I've seen, the bigger risk is not having it," said Jim. And under the circumstances at least, everyone seemed to agree. But Blair was still worried about it; his heart rate was up, his scent was wrong. Jim scanned the room, in defensive mode even though he knew the cause. He felt the city demanding his attention and tried to tune it out, catching himself curiously listening for the conversation from Operations, Elizabeth's office, on the strategizing. They weren't far away, the city was still mostly empty, and ordinarily it shouldn't have been too difficult to pick out. But the lack of other noise to sort through actually made it more difficult, with only thirty some-odd people on the whole of the city-ship.

Across the room from them, someone knocked into a wheeled cart and it clattered into a shelf. Everything was metal. It sounded like things fell. And Jim chased the sounds. Right into a zone.

~*~*~

Zone outs had never been a huge problem for Jim. They tended to fall under the category of "Sandburg's problem" because it was usually Blair who had to pull him out instead of let him work it out in his own time. Granted, that usually meant it was because there was threat of immediate danger, and Blair was only pulling Jim out of the zone to save their lives; it was generally unsafe to zone out in front of a speeding garbage truck, for instance. That was the Guide's job, to assess and evaluate and determine the safety. Usually. Sheppard and Stilinski were powered up enough that their zone outs sent them so far under they forgot how to breathe. But Jim had never had that problem, just like 99.9 percent of their usual recruits never had that problem.

But a zone out in Atlantis was another story altogether.

The city itself was loud, just a big metal can in an ocean that reverberated in tiny ripples from every wave, like an echo chamber with a leaky faucet. That sound faded out through the structure of the city, usually, and could be processed as white noise, so it was rather soothing. The added layer of the technology and its various power sources and mechanical components was more challenging to ignore, had to be identified and acclimated to, and Jim hadn't worked his way through figuring out everything he heard yet. The city was too big and he hadn't hardly been in it long enough. Now he had all those noises, plus every human voice, plus five - _no, six_ \- human heartbeats in his immediate vicinity all at full volume at one time.

And as if that wasn't enough to climb his way through, over the overly-bright light-input from the infirmary around him, Jim saw another layer of noise, like he was thinking and the thoughts were visual in his mind. He wasn't comfortable with it, didn't like how it organized at the edges like digital pixels forming new images that he didn't consciously put there.

The sound of a jaguar's roar seemed to make the visual thoughts stop, for a fraction of a second, before they sped up. Gradually, Jim could recognize words. Lantean scrolled across his mind, in snippets of feeling and sound and words with letters he barely knew anything about. It added to, and distracted from, the sensory-static of a zone out and Jim got lost in it, trying to track something entirely new.

Eventually he felt Blair's hands on his face, felt his breath, saw the shadow of the man between himself and the infirmary. He offered something Jim could chase back to reality. That was enough and Jim backed out of the overload, caught at Blair's wrist and tried to tie himself to that sensation until he could walk back the rest.

"Jim, man, you've gotta breathe," came Blair's voice. Jim used that to focus his vision and could next actually see his friend's face in detail. His senses were turned all the way up, but he could see again. And he remembered to breathe fully when he recognized the burn in his lungs and exhaustion everywhere else. He looked around and found himself still sitting on the edge of the infirmary bed, but Blair leaned against his knees rather than sat beside him. 

He was vaguely aware of people talking to him, but Jim was distracted. He reached up and checked that the radio headpiece was still there to dampen the Ancient noise. It was there, no weird sounds from it. He experimentally took the earpiece off and Blair scrambled to make him put it back on.

"No, I have to check something," Jim muttered at him. Blair left it alone, but he set his hands on Jim's legs and leaned in closer to his space, protective. Without the radio filter, Jim realized there was a quieter version of the city living in his head than the one from the zone. It was harder to focus on and not slip under again, but it was there. With the radio on, the city-thoughts were the usual stream of mental-spoken, whispered words he couldn't make sense of and could ignore. 

"Okay. That... Was weird," Jim said, finally acknowledging the real world around him rather than just processing it.

"You were barely breathing. _Weird_ is _not_ what that was," said Blair.

Jim nodded but he was already over the ache left behind from the weird breathing.

"I mean it, man. If John hadn't been able to tell me you were still alive, you would have been in a mask on oxygen," said Blair. The man was still in his face and obviously expected a more coherent answer. Jim shook his head and tried to figure out how to explain. Words weren't exactly his area.

"The city hijacked my brain, like it does to them. Not like before, though. Before... With that... I could more or less control what I saw. It was like interacting in a dream, not in my thoughts. This one... It was just there. And I couldn't figure anything out. The city was trying to say something but I don't speak the language."

"Well, what was it? Some of us do," said Blair, his attention breaking from Jim long enough to look back at Sheppard and McKay who were apparently still in the room. Beckett lurked not far behind Blair, too. 

"It was weird," Jim replied. "And we've got two more people the city knows to talk to. Whatever it was, I'm sure Sheppard gets an earful already, and we have bigger things to worry about just now. How long was I out? Did they get a lead on the kids?"

"Ten minutes, and not yet," said Sheppard. He crossed his arms as he considered Jim. "What was the city giving you?"

Wincing, Jim tried to shrug it off even as he tried to remember the letters. He had mostly figured out what those looked like over the last month, but there wasn't enough spoken-word practice for him to have really picked up the language.

"I don't know. There were a lot of words in there. It- the vibe that went along with it was _stay_ , _lock-down_ , _hide_... But i don't remember what the words were. And I can't make out the words now, listening for them," said Jim. John nodded 

"Yeah, it's like a bunch of jumbled together sounds more than words. It doesn't do us much good without knowing the language better," he agreed.

"We can check with Daniel then," said Blair.

"Sure, _later_ ," said Jim. He rubbed at the headache nagging. "Look, if we're stuck in limbo for now, I need to crash while we have the chance or this will come back on me when we don't want it to."

"After all that, make yourself at home where you are," said Dr. Beckett. He waved between Ronon Dex still on his own patient bed and Sheppard, who stood nearby and roughly between them. "All three of you. One of ye drugged, the other two not more than twenty-four hours from a bender-"

Sheppard interrupted his professional concern. "Oh come on, that was not-"

"It was not medically approved, is what it wasn't," replied Beckett. "So I mean tae check what I can, which this far out isn't much, but if someone at that village is orchestrating kidnappings, I'm not ruling out poisoning, either."

"I doubt it was poison," said Jim.

"It didn't hit me like that last time, either, though," said John, considering it.

"You weren't online last time," replied McKay.

"And you're just a lightweight now, get used to it," said Dex, because he was suddenly _helpful_ alongside irritable. "It was exactly the same stuff as the first time. The Molanbe aren't out to get us."

Sheppard made a face over at him for the lightweight comment but otherwise nodded agreement. He looked to Beckett. "This was one guy, doc. Not the whole village. It's Teyla's family."

"I still say we check. And suggest strongly ye stay near a ready supply of oxygen until whatever it was or wasn't has cleared your systems," replied the doctor.

No one argued with that. Jim wasn't inclined to. It had been months since he had come close to a zone out, and maybe it was related to that morning's hangover, but it was concerning that he didn't have much say in the presence of an ancient, magic computer in his brain while he was under. The fail-safes on immediate backup weren't a bad idea.

"Colonel Sheppard, Dr. McKay, Operations please," said Elizabeth's voice over their radios. 

There was something like a race to the door then, with all of AR-1 rushing to the call and not just the two requested. Blair backed away and let Jim stand, while Carson frowned at the group as they left.

"Just be careful then," said Dr. Beckett. Blair nodded and clapped him on the shoulder. With his feet under him again, Jim felt a little closer to normal and headed off after the team. 

~*~*~

Atlantis was still new, despite having spent a day exploring and witnessing the new technology. So it was unexpected to walk out to the gateroom and find the stargate lit up and live, a bright blue puddle ready to send someone off to somewhere. Jim steered Blair clear of it and up the stairs instead.

When they made it up to Ops, Ellison hadn't expected to see a grainy video feed on a flat screen TV, either. He approached slow, looking for cameras, not sure if he and Sandburg should be seen on the broadcast, whatever it was. 

"I've certainly not seen my men bring in any strays," said a burly, dusty-haired man on the screen. "Teenagers or otherwise."

Daniel seemed to choke on a laugh, not actually amused so much as surprised. There was something to the man calling the kids _strays_ that _would_ get to a werewolf linguist. Jackson coughed to cover it.

"You're sure about that?" Elizabeth pressed, polite and diplomatic. "Because we were told an arrangement had been made with your people."

"Arrangements? I would have been involved if there were arrangements," came the reply. Even over the shaky feed, Jim could tell the man was lying. Apparently so could Sheppard. The Lt. Colonel stepped away from Elizabeth's side long enough to grab the stack of papers with photos of the Lantean team with the Genean gate address on them.

"Were you involved in the galaxy-wide bounty on my head, then? Or did you switch leadership over there so you can shove your head in the sand?" he asked.

The man on the screen crossed his arms. "I was not involved in any bounty scheme. Just as I was not involved in any schemes to steal your son. And I do not appreciate the implication."

"Well, we don't appreciate being lied to," replied Elizabeth. "And the curious fact of our situation is that the only ones who might have told you Stiles was Colonel Sheppard's son were the Molanbe. So I would ask again, Chief Cowen, if you have any information as to the whereabouts of our missing crew? The Genii and my expedition have peaceful accords and I am respectfully asking you to remember that as you answer."

It was a magnanimous way of offering the man an out but he didn't look like he was going to accept it. His face turned a bit red under the grainy video connection though. Teyla stepped forward, in front of Sheppard, to deal with the man on the screen.

"The Molanbe are a simple people who place a high priority on family. Their efforts to help you with your goals were out of an effort to protect their own. They do not play politics, they simply act. And they have confirmed their involvement in this. The facts remain that the Molanbe delivered two of our people to your people and they sent them through the stargate to your planet. Anything you say to the contrary of that is perhaps... Simply ignorance." Teyla managed the burn with a soft smile but she knew well enough what she had said.

Cowen scowled at them. "I'll have to look into it then. There is an entire planet here. I do not personally oversee the stargate, damn it."

"That would be greatly appreciated. I would be willing to send a team to help assist with your search if needed," said Elizabeth. "Or to watch your stargate if you believe there is unauthorized activity happening that works against the Genii's best interests..."

"That won't be necessary," harrumphed the man on the screen. "I'll see what I can find and check in with you tomorrow."

Sheppard started to argue that tomorrow wasn't acceptable but the connection blinked out. 

"Coward," Sheppard muttered. But the Colonel was almost smiling. Elizabeth was certainly happy with the outcome. She looked back to the technician at one of the consoles.

"Zelenka, close the gate. We'll try again tomorrow," she said. Beyond the glass walls and the railings, the gateroom went dark. Elizabeth looked out at it briefly before tapping the radio at her ear. “Major Lorne, tell your men to stand down. We won’t be sending anyone through just yet.”

“Don’t care what he says, they’re there, and he knows,” said Ronon. Sheppard nodded his agreement. Jim figured the other two Sentinel were relying on the same confirmations he had observed as proof that Cowen had lied.

“He says he’ll look into it,” said Elizabeth. Apparently everyone was on the same page then.

"That's all well and good, but cornering a man like that can backfire..." said Dr. Jackson, offering some caution to their apparent optimism.

"Chief Cowen took them for a reason," said Weir. "Whatever that reason is, he now has to weigh it against this alliance, and he is not in the position of power he gambled on being, say if he had our chief science officer or Colonel Sheppard as he had expected to get."

"He is a surprisingly patient man," added Teyla. "He spent years hiding his true nature from my people. With enough time, he will have a new story and facade to present. Tomorrow he will have an answer that he can control."

"And in the meantime, we know the kids are there," said Sheppard. "So I suggest we send a team in a Jumper to scope it out. See what we find."

"Maybe with the gene, we can boost sensor data somehow," said McKay. "Stiles could get the LSDs to report back with identification of anybody it picked up. We could check the Jumper HUD..."

"You want to give them John?" Daniel asked, surprised. "Send him through the 'gate-"

"I _said_ in a Jumper," returned McKay, rolling his eyes. "We have cloaking capabilities. They'll never know we're there."

"Hey!" Blair interrupted. "Keep it down. And I don’t think sending John out there yet is a great idea. These guys took Ronon down and Jim already zoned. The last thing we need is one more down, in a Jumper.”

“It’s a reasonable caution,” said Elizabeth, speaking over Sheppard’s protest. “So _I_ would suggest we give Cowen the benefit of the doubt. Give him twelve hours. I still want Carson to look you over, I know he didn’t have time to before we called Cowen. So we take the time now. And assume our alliance with the Genii is still solid enough to protect the two young men we know to be currently in their care.”

“ _Assume_ ,” said Sheppard, scoffing for emphasis. Elizabeth crossed her arms at him.

“Yes. It’s better than assuming you can single handedly storm an underground city with hundreds of soldiers to meet you when you already face the threat of these zone outs. I won’t send Major Lorne through the gate, nor anyone else they may have targeted, until we know we have no other alternatives.”

And that was where they left it. With Sheppard and Ronon scowling, Elizabeth daring them to challenge her on it, and everyone else standing by for the potential fireworks show. Blair shoved at Jim’s arm. 

“Back to the infirmary,” he announced. “Before I mandate Sentinel naptime again.”

“Oh come on,” complained Sheppard. McKay put hands on the Colonel’s shoulders and physically moved him toward the stairs.

“Whatever,” added Dex. He limped toward the stairs on his own, just to get ahead of the others apparently. Sandburg blinked after him and then looked up at Jim; when the hell had Ronon Dex started listening to them? They left Daniel and Teyla with Elizabeth to look after their team’s interest in the meantime and headed back for Beckett’s office, per orders. 

~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _______________________________________________  
> Tw: This is an AU that tries to adapt a canon view of sentinel/guide relationships, so references are made to a consensual, non-monogamous, open relationship between sentinel and guide partners.  
> _______________________________________________


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _______________________________  
> ~ See end notes for warnings ~  
> _______________________________

After the usual off-world check-in and the ProX vampire-treatment, Carson didn't make them stay in the med bay, though he did send them off with bottles of water and instructions to get real food, not just PowerBars. Thankfully, Elizabeth had pulled in a few more essential crew while they were gone, which meant the cafeteria was functional. Rodney didn't realize it had been so long since breakfast until he was staring down at a tray of food and suddenly famished. He hardly noticed when Ronon sat down across from him, looked up at him as an after-thought as to the noise. The man was grumpy and scowly and was apparently only eating under protest.

"You can eat your way through anything," the brute grumped at him. Rodney squinted over his sandwich right back.

"We have had this conversation before," he replied. "If I don't eat, I get sick. I eat, I don't get sick, I can actually use my brilliant brain to its most useful potential, and everyone wins. This is how I help."

Ronon rolled his eyes before slouching over his plate to stab at the wilted greenery on it.

"Knock it off," John said, weighing in quietly in defense of both his friends. "We all fucked up. Don't take it out on McKay."

"Point of fact: I said it was a bad idea," Rodney added. John stared at him, chewing his food like he had to think about it. Then he shook his head.

"Nevermind. Take it out on McKay, he can handle it," he said. Mildly offended, Rodney put his sandwich down.

"Excuse me. It happens to be actually not my fault for once, so don't blame me for this," he said. Ronon pointed a fork at him.

"You could have overruled Sheppard on letting us go hunting, same as Sandburg. And you didn't. So you can share it," the man replied. And he wasn't exactly wrong, but that was _entirely_ -

"He's not exactly wrong, you know." John interrupted the thoughts he was apparently reading and Rodney scowled at him for it. 

"Fine. Next time we send Teyla with Ronon so he doesn't zone out and take a nap on the job," replied Rodney, all sarcasm and annoyance at the unhelpful sass. Ronon kicked the table as he sat up, enough to be intimidating, and John changed his stance quick to match.

"Okay, _now_ I mean it. That's enough!" His tone said it was an order but he looked between his friends in open concern. "Blowing off steam is one thing, but we're not putting ourselves back in the infirmary over it, got me? Knock it off."

"Oh _, I_ would have been fine," said Ronon, his usual taunting tone when he was sour about something.

"No you wouldn't have," replied John. "Don't mess with the Guides, remember?"

"Whatever," Ronon said, dismissing the excuse. "I don't need a babysitter. And I don't zone. That's your Milky Way crap."

"Yeah, knock-out toxins don't give you much choice in the matter, either," said Rodney, much more cautious this time. "But if you can spout bullshit then I can, too."

"Yeah. What he said," added John. "Now everybody's sorry and we can move the hell on."

Rodney tucked back into his food, careful of the heavy cloud of trouble across the table from him. Next to him, John leaned into his thigh and lined up against him from knee to boots. He looked nervously from Ronon to Rodney but chewed on his sandwich like he was fine. 

It struck Rodney then that he saw the anxiousness on both of them, when he was used to just letting them bluster and grouch. Anger was easy to recognize and Rodney had dealt with too many bullies growing up not to know to leave it alone when that anger rolled off an over-muscled, trigger-happy, soldier-type. But he wasn't used to picking up on the other stuff under the anger. He didn't know what to do with it now that he saw the mess of guilt and anxiety and worry. _Great_. 

Since he couldn't exactly page Sandburg about it, Rodney let it sit there. Maybe their food would take care of it or maybe something useful would magically appear and save them all from Rodney McKay trying to sort out the soft science involved in defusing a couple of lit up hotheads. Instead, despite trying to avoid it, he got to where he could practically see it around them. It was new; he didn’t like that.

"Okay, wait," Rodney blurted, feeling like he was trying to stall his own panic. "If you don't need a babysitter, what about Teyla?"

"What about her?" Ronon asked, and Rodney could guess from his tone that was the wrong track.

"You, Sentinel. Teyla, Guide," said John. He sounded curious as much as trying to be helpful. "So... _Babysitter_."

Ronon huffed and shook his head. "We don't need the excuse like you did. Partner, not babysitter."

"Girlfriend, whatever," said Rodney. "Still your Guide."

"I don't have one. That's a you-guys thing. Didn't have one when I started seeing things, don't need one now," said Ronon.

"Except she still helps you with it," said John. He nodded toward Rodney. "Same as me and him. It gets clearer when she's there, you breathe easier. You respond faster. I've seen you guys at it for months and didn't get it. That's why you were so messed up on Datura. We didn't have Teyla, you were back to fighting this stuff on your own again."

Ronon stared at his mushed-up salad and shrugged. "Maybe."

John smirked and shook the last half of his sandwich at him. "That's why you two hooked up on the Daedalus on the way back. After a couple weeks on your own, everything was messed up, then you got her back... Same damn thing..."

John trailed off, sounding surprised. Rodney raised an eyebrow but nobody offered a more helpful explanation. "What?" he finally asked. "Same as what."

John opened his mouth to reply, then hesitated, turned rather pink up to his ears as he looked around. He chomped at his sandwich and muttered "Nothin'."

Ronon almost laughed again and the old familiar gloating grin was back. Some of the green color faded off the air around him and Rodney had to pretend he hadn't seen it in the first place. 

"Same _what_?" Rodney asked again.

"Sensory high," offered Ronon, adding in a shrug even as the answer seemed to make John uncomfortable as all hell. "I got back around her, could kinda control it all again. But everything was more intense."

Rodney blinked as he processed that. "Everything?" he asked. "Like... Everything?"

Still pink in the ears, John lightly backhanded him in the gut. "Yes, _everything_. Stop asking questions, McKay."

Rodney trapped his arm under his jacket. "No, wait a minute. The thing when you fell-"

"Rod _ney-_ "

"Well? Was it?"

"Was it, _what-_ no, nevermind, not talking about it," John said. Rodney ignored it.

"Was it the sensory high thing?"

"I just said it was!"

Rodney kept his arm but slouched a little in his chair, leaned forward to finish his meal with much less enthusiasm than he started out. John folded their fingers together but tried to sit up a little straighter, in his own chair. They still had Ronon's attention.

"What just happened?" Ronon asked.

" _You_. Not helping," said John quickly. Rodney took another bite of food as he mulled it over.

"When we first got to the Project. I kissed him and he... Kinda fell over, now it turns out he was just _high_ again," Rodney finally answered. 

"Oh jeezus, Rodney, I _wasn't_ high! And I didn’t _fall_ ," muttered John as Ronon nearly fell out of his chair laughing. The cafeteria got louder in general as the few other people in the vicinity caught on to Ronon's sudden good humor and found their own excuses to laugh.

And Rodney inwardly preened at successfully stepping the man away from the murderous angsting he had been doing when they walked in the room. Ronon tearing their heads off for letting his team be taken from him wouldn't exactly help get Stiles and Derek back, but distraction away from the darker realities would have definite long term benefits. Even if it was at John's expense. 

"You could handle it," Rodney tossed back at him a half hour later when John complained about it. They were in the privacy of their own apartment then, oddly empty and unfamiliar as it was. 

"I know I could, that wasn't the point," John groused. But he still shucked his shirt and collapsed on the bed. Orders were to eat food, drink water, and sleep off the rest of the brine, and apparently the Lt. Colonel planned to follow them. "I'll never hear the end of it now. We'll be off-world somewhere and he'll start laughing and it's _not_ gonna be at the locals."

"What exactly gave you the impression you were ever going to hear the end of it _before_?" Rodney asked, genuinely surprised. "I happen to have been there, too. Not that I have an _ego_ problem, but I promise that you, buckling at the knees when I touched you, did absolutely nothing good to it."

John tossed an arm over his eyes but even Rodney's normal-human vision could see his cheeks flush down to his neck. That was, admittedly, very nice to watch, and the fact that shared quarters meant he could maybe even get used to the sight only made it better. If they could just keep each other and the city from getting trashed and taken, anyway. That would be nice. And Rodney suddenly had a whole new reason added to the list of why he had to keep the Wraith and all the other Bad Guys away from his city.

They had enough problems as it was, however, and the fact that Sheppard still had to sleep it off was only proof of that. John at least could sleep without a guilty conscience. Rodney was still awake, under no threat of zone or winter brine poisoning, and relatively useless against the challenge of infiltrating an underground nuclear bunker. 

"Look, maybe I should go check in with Zelenka. See if there's anything-" Rodney's idea broke off as John lowered his arm and looked over at him. It dawned on him then that John would just follow him and stand in a corner to pretend to sleep if he tried. "Nevermind. I can check on things from here."

"That would be a _great_ idea," replied John. The exhaustion did sneak into his voice then. "Atlantis really won't shut up. I'm screwed without the radio."

"No sleeping with the radio," replied Rodney. Not like that was a newsflash to the man but John didn't argue. Rodney moved over to the desk, where he had left his tablet charging a few days earlier, and was instantly distracted by the metal, Ancient, techno-bauble that John and Stiles had found. It sat at the back of the desk, with the controller, where Rodney had guaranteed it would be safe from Zelenka toying with it. An idea struck and he collected the orb with the tablet and the controller and moved over to sit on the bed next to John. The man looked surprised that there were computers in their bed. 

"You sleep," Rodney instructed. "I have things to do."

John reached over and picked up the Ancient spy-ball from where it landed on the bed beside Rodney's thigh and John's bare ribs, a little too close to his ticklish spot because of how he had sprawled. "Glad you're entertained anyway."

"And I need your radio," said Rodney. John put the ball down, well out of reach. 

"Why."

Once he was settled against the wall that served as the bed's headboard, Rodney started toying with the controller in one hand and the tablet in his lap with the other. "I wanna figure out what this thing does."

"That didn't answer my question, Rodney," John pointed out. But Rodney was already distracted and barely heard him. He got into the controller and tried to find his way to the settings through all the Lantean slowing him down. John moved around some next to him, obviously not sleeping, but Rodney didn't pay any attention until the man reached up and waved a hand in front of his face. Rodney swatted it away automatically.

"Earth to McKay. Did _you_ zone?" John asked. Rodney hummed at him for it and went back to trying to ignore him.

"Did you know that Ellison could still zone out?" he asked, idle and distracted by where the question sent his thoughts. He was running two modes: one reading Lantean code and trying not to get lost, and the other keeping tabs on the fact that John wasn't asleep yet.

"In theory, I knew, sure," said John. His tone of voice said he must have shrugged but Rodney didn't bother looking away from the small controller screen.

"Right. So Sandburg screws up, too," he said. It was an almost cheerful thought. John rolled onto his shoulder and propped himself up on an elbow.

"It's not a _screw up-_ "

Rodney dismissed the point with a shrug and a nod. "The man isn’t infallible, is my point. He can’t stop them either."

John caught the edge of the controller and pulled it toward himself to drag Rodney's attention with it.

"Rodney. Hey- Rodney!" Rodney looked away from the screen to meet the man's eyes just beyond it. John let go of the controller then, seemed satisfied by the attention. "If I zone out, I'm fine, okay? It’s on _me_. Just make sure I'm alive to get out of it. That's all you gotta do."

Rodney grimaced at the point. "The potential for _not_ doing that is the worrying part."

He saw John roll his eyes before the man ducked under the controller and curled into Rodney's leg. He tossed his arm over Rodney's thighs at his hip, careful to avoid the computer tablet balanced on his knees. Then he made himself comfortable like he intended to sleep wedged between Rodney and the pillow. 

"The stats say you can do it. So far, two years in, you're still at a hundred percent success rate," he pointed out, voice muffled by Rodney’s shirt. “At least ninety-nine point nine. I think we cut it close a couple times.” 

Rodney glanced down at him then, not quite understanding why the man trusted him and statistics after watching him blow up the better part of a solar system by trusting numbers. But John was settled in, face right up against his shirt at his hip and arm heavy and snug over his legs. So Rodney shuffled how he held the controller and slouched into the wall a little toward him, dropping his arm over John's shoulder to rest his hand over the white compass tattoo at the man's ribs. It stood out more after a day in the sun and the salt water of an alien ocean.

Rodney didn't realize when John fell asleep. He was grappling with code, and code in another language took concentration, but he found what he was looking for. The spy-orb controller could be hooked up to the computer tablets. Which, of course, meant that in order for him to progress any further with his work, he had to let go of John, figure out how to sync the tablet to the controller, and start working with an interface that spoke English instead. 

Glancing down, he saw that John had fallen asleep with the radio still tucked over his ear. Thankfully there had been no talking in his sleep, but it was still not worth the risk. Rodney carefully claimed the earpiece from him, hesitating to make sure he didn't wake John up. Then the earpiece went in his pocket, for lack of anywhere more convenient to stash it. John didn't seem to notice and just turned his scruffy face further against the pillow.

~*~*~

The bullshit excuse was that they couldn’t allow Derek to catch whatever had taken over Stiles, as if the toxin in their systems was some demonic possession and not a drug the Genii had apparently formulated themselves. Derek had tested the bars that were rooted in the cement walls, decided he probably could have at least done some damage to the cell, but it wouldn’t have gotten him to wherever they stashed Stiles. It wouldn't have been impossible to break out, he could have taken a few soldiers out before they got to him with their bullets and drugged darts and electrified batons, except for the part where it increased the likelihood of getting himself killed. Leaving Stiles stranded with these people wasn't happening. Derek dragged the guy to another galaxy; he wasn't abandoning him there.

They had been in Pegasus less than a week and already found trouble. At least this trouble wasn't their fault.

The question of Sheppard and his team loomed heavy, too. No amount of pacing the cell - which he had measured out, fifteen feet by fifteen feet, not that it was useful for anything other than the observation that it was the same size as their room back on Atlantis - could answer for Derek whether or not Colonel Sheppard had a clue where they were. It definitely didn't answer the question of if the team would actually come looking for them. Just because Derek felt like he had found a pack, just because Stiles called them one, didn't mean it meant anything against the Genii. The longer Derek stewed on it, the more certain he became that they would be on their own.

His watch said he spent hours pacing the cell. They had left him his radio, but Stiles didn't answer. Nobody did. There was some static, about an hour after Stiles had been taken away, and Derek thought he'd heard Sheppard's voice. But there was too much snowy noise for him to understand the fraction of sound he thought he had recognized. It was probably just his imagination and Derek tried not to worry about it. Ultimately, he settled against the back wall of the cell and settled in to try to sleep.

It didn't work out so great, but he tried.

There was a weird vibe to the floor of the place, like something was constantly working, running, vibrating the walls in a subtle, hardly noticeable pulse. It met with the unmistakable scratching feeling under his skin, at the back of his neck, that reminded him quite clearly that he hadn't done more than a few full shifts over the last month.

It had been over a month since he had seen a full moon, really, thanks to the ride on the Daedalus. The few shifts since then had carried him along fine, with the partial shifts as he had worked with Daniel on stepping him toward shifting. Daniel still wasn’t confident on the full shifts but he had tried them. It was mostly a case that he didn’t want to. Violence wasn’t the man’s thing and everything about the shift was violence, he said. They had run out of time apparently because who knew when Daniel was going to meet a full moon, but it looked like Derek wasn’t going to be there to help. 

And now... Derek was buried underground, and who knew what would happen where he was. The planet had a sun, it had to have a moon cycle as well, and Derek didn't know what would happen when it pulled on him. Or if it even would. But he wasn't stupid enough to try shifting to ease the urge while he was locked in a cage. Glad the chain had been removed from the leather cuffs at his wrists, Derek tucked his hands in against his ribs, under his arms as he tried to stay warm curled up against a stone wall, and managed a few naps.

"Derek?"

Stiles' voice startled Derek to awareness after a few hours. He opened his eyes to see the same cell walls as before but no Stiles. As he rubbed at his eyes and woke up a little more, he heard static on his radio earpiece. Derek stood up and shook off the ache from the cell by moving closer to the gate and the main door. He tried the radio again.

"Stiles?"

The response was a blast of static over what was very definitely Stiles' voice. It was faint, but it was him, not Derek's imagination that time. 

"...not sick... Can work... _Morons_... Up here..."

The sounds were random and erratic, Derek couldn't understand all of them, but he tried to talk back whenever there was a break in the ramble. The radio signal wasn't clear enough for them to understand each other, but it counted just knowing he was okay enough to call people morons.

A few minutes later, Radim showed up. Just him and one other uniformed moron. Derek stopped trying to talk back to Stiles and only half paid attention to the noise in his ear as the gate to the cell was opened. 

"Stiles is well. Apparently he can't touch anything from the Ancestors without you there," the Genii scientist said as he waved Derek out. It almost sounded like he believed whatever _Stiles_ had told him on the matter. Well, that was lucky. Derek smiled to tamp down his irritation and quickly left the cell.

"We told you, we haven't been here very long. There's a lot we don't know how to use," Derek said, cautiously trying to sound out the man's expectations. Radim just waved him toward the door to walk with him. He walked next to him, without the guard bothering to turn the leather bracelets into handcuffs again, like he expected no trouble.

"We also don't know how to use the technology we found, Mr. Hale. If we can get your assistance with it, we all learn something. Whether it works ultimately or not," replied the scientist. Derek kept his opinion to himself and only nodded. He was the one who told Stiles to be nice, so if the guy with the cell keys was going to call him _Mr. Hale_ , like he was some kind of momentarily _important_ , Derek could play along. He had obviously been talking to Stiles and actually listening. Derek was going to ignore how suspicious that alone was on its face and just follow him back to Stiles.

They climbed out of the cavernous underground city and the crawling, sickly feeling that had been making Derek so paranoid backed off the closer they got to the surface. He was breathing easier by the time he found himself standing in early morning daylight. He glanced at his watch, feeling a different kind of disoriented as he realized his body thought it was three AM. The heavy moisture on the air and the sunlight he could see said it was more like eight AM, if the planet worked at all like Earth. 

They walked out toward a line of trees, beyond a village that looked a few years more advanced than the Molanbe's, though they both had wooden rooftops and brick chimneys and covered porches. They seemed to be headed toward a large barn at the outskirts, tucked behind a few houses. Derek heard Stiles easily, arguing with someone inside the barn.

"They're right there! Just let me go look!" Stiles insisted. Derek reached up to trigger the radio at his ear.

"Calm down, Stiles. Damn, I can hear you from here," Derek said, quiet but loud enough for the radio to hear him.

"That's because you... 've got really good hearing, asshole," Stiles replied, just barely catching himself before he said something they didn't want publicized if they didn't need to let it out. "Hurry up then. They've got a Jumper."

Derek blinked at the news. They might not know much about the stargates, but they had seen Sheppard work the Jumper's DHD. They could work with a Jumper. Without answering Radim's questions about who he was talking to, Derek started jogging toward where he had heard Stiles' voice at the barn. The other two caught on and kept up. Derek walked in through the large, open barn door and was rather intentionally collided with, Stiles suddenly in his face, looking much healthier and like himself than he had the night before. Stiles caught his wrists like he was balancing but he smirked at him from a few inches away; it was better than a tackle in greeting, anyway. 

"Hey. They got a Jumper," Stiles said.

"Hey," Derek replied. He glanced past Stiles at the rough looking Puddlejumper in question. "I see that."

Radim showed up then and Stiles stepped aside to stop blocking traffic. Derek moved up to the ship but stalled as he noticed two other weirdly box-shaped pieces of technology lurking in the big barn that were much less welcome. The silver-blue, metal crate, like the one that he and Stiles had been taken through the stargate in, now waited off in the wings, flat on the ground and silent, out of commission. The things looked nothing like the Jumper, like a different kind of technology entirely, and nothing at all like anything Derek had seen in the underground city or above it. They seemed almost threatening, tucked away in the corners and lurking.

Stiles pulled his attention back to the Jumper then, literally catching his elbow, fingers splayed carefully over his arm. Stiles was cheating again, grounding himself off Derek by touch. And he was amped up and buzzing energy. 

"So? Have you been in there yet?" Derek asked. Stiles shook his head quickly. 

"Are you kidding? After yesterday? The last thing I need is to have my brain sucked into a computer without you here to pull it back out," he said. Derek looked over the Jumper again. It was covered in dirt and grime, moldy and roughed up on the outside like it had been buried in a swamp. He caught Stiles' hand and pulled him to the front of the ship. 

The front window was crusted over in green mud. Stiles started to reach forward to wipe some of it away, but Derek stopped him with a " _Don't even think about it_." Stiles stood back and scratched at the leather cuffs rather than argue. Derek found an old blanket on one of the barn's stall walls and used that to wipe the grime off the front windows. Once it was cleared enough to see through, Derek waved Stiles toward it. 

"Just don't touch that stuff. No messing around after yesterday," he said, quiet. Stiles nodded and was very careful not to lean on the side of the ship as he tried to see inside. He seemed to go a shade paler but he backed off.

"Well. There's dusty bodies in there. That's nice," Stiles muttered. He stepped back, looking around the barn at the closed windows and various ventilation points in the roof over their heads. A moment later there was a hydraulic hiss as the Jumper gate opened up. Stiles' Genii babysitter had been all but leaned at the back of the ship and let out some kind of alien swearing fit as he scrambled away from it.

There was an amazed, slowly brightening expression on Stiles' face then. Similar to his excitement of waking up Atlantis a few days earlier, but this was different. 

"I did that," he said. Derek, smirking at him, only nodded. A moment later, Stiles was coughing and hiding his nose in his shirt as the dead air of the Jumper hit him. Derek followed suit even though he couldn't smell it yet. The Genii at the other end were already coughing and Derek figured there was a good reason Stiles hadn't opened the gate while they were standing anywhere near it. Derek moved to the dirty window and peered inside now that the interior wouldn't be so dark. He saw the bodies Stiles mentioned, skeletons wrapped in funny, fragile clothes at the back of the Jumper. One was slouched and crumbled on a bench and the other stretched out on the floor. The Genii, scarves over their faces, were poking at the bones with the ends of their batons and watching them crumble.

Aside from the sunlight from the open gate, the Puddlejumper stayed dark. Radim ventured to the front and stood in front of the center console. Nothing lit up for him as he sat down, and he sat in the copilot's chair, Derek noticed. That was going to be a problem for him if he wanted to do anything with the ship. Or a problem for Stiles, but there was no way to know which yet.

The man leaned forward and waved for them to join him. It was time to see if the thing still worked apparently. The light behind Stiles' eyes was clear; he wanted to try it. Whether or not he would be able to breathe in the Jumper was another matter entirely. He glanced at Derek, hesitation clear, and Derek shrugged. 

"I'll check it out first. Keep everything low for now. Dial up sight," he said as he urged them around the corner toward the gate.

"Dude, what do you think I'm doing already?" Stiles replied. "I can't even taste my tongue right now."

Grinning viciously, Derek caught his arm to hold Stiles back and ducked in for a kiss to call his bluff at the claim. Stiles caught him at the hips and clung on, didn't even hesitate before he was kissing back and leaning in, hungry. When they pulled back, he was more relaxed and his pupils were wide. 

" _Now_ sight is dialed up," Derek pointed out, smug. "Turn the others down. And don't touch anything."

Stiles caught on then to the trick and narrowed his eyes, but he didn't do much more than glare about it and Derek watched his eyes focus. Stiles still had a fistful of his shirt and shoved him toward the Jumper gate again, muttering " _Smartass_." He hung back as Derek made his way inside, trying to figure out if the scents in the Jumper were harmful or not to his Sentinel. It was a good sign that the Genii hadn't fallen over dead, though it wasn't an absolute indication that things were safe. The Jumper was isolated enough that Derek probably could have taken the three men out without much trouble, taken advantage of the beautiful opportunity he found himself with in close quarters and the loud itch of the moon demanding a shift, but they didn't know if the Jumper would get them out of there to save them from the potential consequences.

So Derek just took cautious breaths and used the blanket he had used on the window to wipe down the layers of dust around the chair in the front of the ship. 

"What- it's just dust," Radim pointed out. He still coughed as the dust hit the air. Derek kept his nose under his shirt collar.

"Just dust that a Sentinel could get sick from. If you want this thing to work, he has to be able to touch it, without an attack," said Derek. Radim frowned over at him.

"An attack like yesterday?"

"Maybe," was all Derek said. He got distracted by cleaning the panels at the front console and ignored the scientist. It took a few minutes for him to be satisfied with the mess and call Stiles back. He was hardly past the gate ramp before the lights blinked on. The two soldiers were alarmed but Ladon Radim seemed to have been looking forward to the sight and smiled broadly.

"Yes. Then this _will_ work," he said. Stiles shrugged and ducked around Derek, not at all hiding how eager he was to get the pilot's chair.

"Where did you get this thing? How much power does it have?" Stiles asked instead. Like he knew what he was talking about. Derek kept the laughter to himself. The buttons and dials lit up, mostly, seemed a little faded under a layer of grime, but functional. Stiles stared up at the window, like he was concentrating, with no immediate results. It eventually flickered, offering the visual effect of a sharp, _popping_ sound, before the boxes and words spread across the screen. 

"Holy shit," muttered Stiles, even as Derek thought the exact same thing. 

"What- are you doing that?" Radim asked, pointing to the window-screen. There were various graphs on it, fluctuating lines, that, based on the few words Derek could confidently work out through the Lantean Ancient, were indicators of the power supply.

Stiles nodded absently. "The Jumpers kind of... Read your mind. But I don't know how. Or what I'm looking for..."

"Well, will this ship fly?" Radim wanted to know.

"Hate to break it to you, dude, but I don't know how to fly," said Stiles. He shrugged but his attention was on the screen as it flipped to more diagnostics. This one had flashing red areas, which seemed like a pretty universal indicator of bad news. The words around it were not in the vocabulary lists Derek had worked with over the past month.

"Is that... Engine stabilizer damage?" Stiles asked him, looking up over his shoulder. Derek didn't know the answer either, so he shook his head, shrugged. 

"You can't read?" Radim asked, sounding surprised.

"Not this language! We just got here! Gimmie a break," replied Stiles. The scientist seemed amused by that and started poking at things on the consoles in front of him to make things move on the screen. Stiles' hand twitched, like he wanted to shoo the man away, but he managed to stay still and watch the Genii navigate easily through the information available. 

"So?" Stiles asked. "Can it fly?"

The smug bemusement on Radim's face faded. He shook his head. "I wouldn't risk it yet. Yes, the system indicates damage. But I don't know where these stabilizers are located, let alone how to fix them."

"McKay has been working with these ships for _years_ and he doesn't even know everything about how they work yet," said Stiles. "This is going to take forever."

"No offense, but Dr. McKay was who I intended to be working with this on," said Radim.

" _Full_ offense, but you should have just asked," said Stiles. Whatever Radim was working on stopped listening to him then and the man was startled by the HUD switching to some other screen, with a scrolling list of symbols. Gate symbols. Because Stiles was somewhat comfortable with the DHD and he was being a brat to the Genii. "Hey, this thing has been to a lot of places... Too bad it doesn't say when it went there."

“How did you do that?” Radim asked, staring at where Stiles’ hands had hardly moved. One rested on the front edge of the console in front of him and the other was possessively guarding the DHD console between them. Caught out, Stiles tapped at the nearest button by just moving a finger. The screen blipped off.

“I told you... I _don’t know_ ,” he replied. Ladon looked from the blank window to Stiles and sat back in his chair, arms crossed as he frowned. Derek tried to keep the smirk off his face.

~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _______________________________________________  
> Tw: canon-typical bullying, here thar be swear words  
> _______________________________________________


	14. Chapter 14

There wasn't any news from Cowen by the time Carson cleared John again. The headache buzz from the brine had finally let up, which meant Sheppard had actually managed to get some real sleep. A few hours was enough to get him back into things and not feeling like he had to play catch-up with just existing. 

Rodney was right though; a lot of stress had been lifted knowing the perfect no-zone record wasn't actually a _thing_ and even the experts still fought with it. The hypervigilance John had been holding himself to for a month was tiring and ultimately, maybe, not even helpful. John cautiously decided to back off from it and see what happened, set the dials and forget it, instead of constantly poking at either the dials or Rodney. 

Ellison, however, was another story. His own rules grounded him. After a month of Sandburg and Ellison both within easy hearing range, the team was being split up, because there was no way they were keeping Sheppard from going through the 'gate again. He hadn't been the one caught by the zone and the team was still his responsibility. That included Stiles and Derek, stranded on another planet, and if they had an idea where to find the kids then Sheppard and his annoying senses were going to check it out.

Weir tried to argue him out of it. There was no way she would allow it. She couldn't settle with handing Sheppard and McKay over to the Genii along with a Jumper when she had their faces on bounty posters on her desk. The Director pulled out the glare and the crossed arms and _everything_.

"Look, we're not going to walk up and _say hi_ , alright? It's just a fly-by. Cloaked. They won't know we're there," said John, trying to be peaceable about it. "Just to... See what we can learn."

"And what if you learn where our missing gentlemen are?" Elizabeth challenged.

"Well, then we learned something _important_ , didn't we? It was worthwhile and we have information-"

"You are not to engage. No landing the ship. Are you telling me you _won't_ land the ship?" Elizabeth asked. She already knew the answer and John was determined not to lie.

"I'm telling you we're going to go check it out. And we're taking Dr. Jackson, just in case the whole full-moon thing comes into play while Hale is down," said John, shamelessly diverting the topic of concern. Rodney looked up at him quickly.

"We are?" he asked. John cast him a sideways glance and Rodney dropped it, sitting up a little straighter and physically adjusting to the idea. "Right. Because Ronon and the Colonel are going."

"And Daniel's been through all of this with SG-1 before. If you're worried about needing an experienced, responsible adult representative of Atlantis on the trip, we've got one," said John.

"I would expect _you_ to be the responsible adult, Colonel," said Elizabeth, not amused. "You do understand why I am uncomfortable-"

"It's fine. It's not even gonna be crowded in the Jumper," John went on easily. "We'll keep the rest of the team out of trouble. Just be gone a few hours. Hell, we might not even miss breakfast."

Whether it was because she was tired or because she knew better, Elizabeth didn't seem to trust him. He sighed. "Did you check with Sandburg? The _only_ one not cleared to leave right now is Ellison."

"Yes, and I am not as confident as he is that your team should be going out without the experts," she replied.

"The experts are fine with it."

"Yes and the experts perhaps don't know you as well as they should in your natural habitat," Elizabeth said, eyebrow arched. And it wasn't like John had any ground to stand on with that argument, which was thoroughly frustrating. 

"Elizabeth. I'm not leaving them there. So your options are to let me take my team through the stargate, or you stick me and Daniel in the brig until you and Cowen have this thing handled to your satisfaction."

"Dr. Jackson hasn't-"

"The guy who can help Dr. Jackson deal with the double moonrise starting tonight is inconveniently located on another planet right now," said John, pointing back out the window of her office toward the 'gate. "So as I understand it, our options are to keep him off this planet as much as possible, or stick him in the brig to figure it out on his own when the time comes."

Elizabeth changed her tone then. "Is he alright?"

"I don't know, I'm not the guy with those answers," John pointed out.

"Maybe under the circumstances, you should have a few more of them," replied Elizabeth. "Which gets back to my point from a few days ago. But I see yours, for the moment. Come back with information, please. Every one of you. Without starting any _wars_ , please."

That was the only go-ahead Sheppard was willing to wait for. He collected Rodney and headed for the Jumper bay, where he may have possibly suggested ahead of time that the team wait in case things hadn't gone his way. He hadn't _told_ them it was preparation for insubordination, at the time, and it worked out nicely that he wouldn't have to. 

"All clear?" Sandburg asked at their approach. John nodded and looked over at the team loitering at the back of one of the Jumpers.

"We're cleared to go. Recon only, do not engage," he reported, not overly concerned with the details. Ronon scoffed at the orders, clearly on the same page as Sheppard about it. They weren't fortune tellers; whatever happened, well, it happened. John turned his attention back to Sandburg and Ellison. "You two still staying here?"

Blair hesitated, exchanged a glance with Ellison. Then he nodded his head as he turned back to Sheppard.

"Well. The last few times I've let you guys out of my sight, it hasn't gone so great, but the third time's gotta be the charm, right?" he said, trying for his usual humor. But the worry was clear and the smile faded fast. "Look, I'm not gonna mess around with this stuff. I set the rules, I gotta hold us to them the same as I would you or Stiles. Jim stays on this side of the stargate until he's back on his game. But I'll reassess on the four weeks thing. That's... Maybe just an arbitrary number. We'll see."

"Maybe?" Rodney echoed, his opinion clear. John smirked as Sandburg rolled his eyes at the sarcasm.

"This whole Final Frontier crap doesn't come with a manual. So shoot me for being cautious without the data," he replied. Rodney accepted that with what looked like grudging respect before letting himself into the waiting Puddlejumper.

The team was through the stargate minutes later, and the cloak sealed up the Jumper as soon as it cleared the horizon. John headed straight for Cowen's village and the annoying underground city.

"I don't like the Genii," Rodney announced, to no one in particular. "When we get them back, Elizabeth should drop the alliance."

"Ya think?" asked Daniel. He had been strangely quiet since Sheppard had collected him that morning, from his quiet, roommate-less apartment, and now there was a very definite, uncharacteristic annoyance in the peacekeeper's tone. "Maybe this wasn't the smartest culture to gamble on."

"We needed their help," replied McKay. "So far, Pegasus has been woefully under-civilized. And the Daedalus isn't always available..."

"Excuse me?" Teyla said.

"Might wanna rephrase the under-civilized part, there, buddy," John advised. 

"Okay, civilization was not the word. Technologically speaking, we haven't met many people who are close to our development, is what I meant," Rodney said, less gracious than mindful of Teyla's tone and Ronon's scowl, which together promised he was about to be shoved out the Jumper's nearest airlock. "And unless we want to go around making our own enemies through colonization, which is not recommended for so many reasons, then we get stuck with the Genii and the Hoffans and the Daturans and no. No more."

"Well, there are a few more. And they aren't all bad," said Sheppard. "But the Genii. That baby can go out with the water."

"Get 'em back, blow the 'gate," suggested Ronon. Sheppard raised an eyebrow, considering it. His friend was irritable and growly, more than his usual, even if he was slouched back in his chair like he didn't have a concern in the world.

"There's gotta be something better than blowing up the stargate," complained Jackson. 

"Oh, look, we're here," said Rodney quickly, like he had picked up on the same bad attitudes that John was sniffing out. And John idled the ship out over some trees, the known access-point to the underground city in easy sight. He pulled up the HUD and started trying to figure out how to get the onboard life signs detectors to scope out his team with the handy nametags like Stiles had pulled up from the handheld versions. It was not successful, though he could identify a team loitering in the hut that went down to the city, and handfuls of people spread out throughout the village. The city itself flared with toxic readings that fluctuated on a visible pattern.

The lifesigns map dropped to a corner grid as Rodney started messing with dials and buttons on his side, the tablet set in his lap and stealing his attention at random. "Hold on..."

"Holding," John replied, because he was also snooping. "For what, are we holding, inquiring minds want to know..."

"Power signature, swing right, hundred fifty yards," said Rodney, distracted. "It's not nuclear. Same signature as a Jumper."

Multiple distinct power signatures separated themselves out on the screen and Rodney gestured at the edge of the front window like that was the way to set a heading. It wasn't Stiles and Derek, but it was interesting, so Sheppard steered the ship at a crawl in the direction Rodney literally pointed. There were, as it happened, five lifesigns in the area of the power source Rodney was tracking. 

"Damn. Fine," muttered Rodney. He stood up and dropped the tablet on his chair. He disappeared into the back as John scouted the area with the Jumper and the ship started drawing up grid maps. His scientist started digging into a backpack and then went quiet. Suddenly there was a feedback-squawk at John's ear and he ducked away from the loud sound instinctively.

"What the hell-"

"Sorry! Probably me," said Rodney. John swung around in his chair to look back and saw Rodney walking toward him again, carrying the little metal spy-orb. "I synched this guy up to transmit on your radios. You should be able to control it that way. We just didn't have a chance to test it when you woke up."

John blinked at him as Rodney handed him the ball. "Did you even sleep?"

"Two hours?" Rodney shrugged. He waved John out of his chair. "Gimmie the Jumper. You go put that in that building right there."

"Wait- back it up..." John began, but Rodney tapped the ball that he held in his hand, interrupting him.

"That. You should be able to work _that_ the same way you work the Jumpers, or half of Atlantis, for that matter. Which means you can't work it and the Jumper at the same time. Ergo, I get the Jumper, you get the spyball."

"Spyball? That's what we're calling it?" John asked.

"It's what _I'm_ calling it. Leave it alone for three days with Zelenka and he calls it a _Kino_ or something but I'm not feeling that Russian about it," replied Rodney. "But that's not exactly important at the moment, so if you please, Colonel, go mind-control the spyball and drop it out the back so we can see what's making that energy spike in that barn."

Intrigued, Sheppard turned over control of the Jumper and took the ball to the back in order to work with it. Rodney had turned it on but John eventually got it in the air and hovering around the ship. He could steer the thing around the same way he could open doors and turn on lights back home, a thought became an action. So he opened up the back gate of the Puddlejumper and sent the spyball zooming out. 

It was easy to keep going as long as he had the thing in his line of sight but it got significantly more difficult without it. Snatches of images hit his mind, like crashing into a pile of dirt and weeds, but it wasn't easy to make sense of, and it was more than a little weird. John ended up back in the front of the ship, taking over a corner of the HUD display for the video signal he couldn't make sense of from the earpiece tech by _thinking_ the video feed onto the screen. From there, it was just like playing a video game with his mind.

"This is so freaking cool, I gotta say," John admitted. Rodney, the genius who gave him a new toy he himself couldn't operate, gave him a jealous frown and pointed toward the barn.

"Energy signature, please," he reminded him. The spyball wobbled on its way to the barn and was soon broadcasting back images of a lit up Puddlejumper.

"You have got to be kidding me," Rodney complained. But Sheppard's attention was already caught by something outside of it, large blue-green silver boxes with slatted ventilation holes at the top. Looked a lot like what the Daturans used as people-movers. And they sat off to the side, harmless. The question of where the Genii had scrounged up a banged-up Jumper was less distracting than where they had gotten the Daturan tech.

Suddenly the power went off on the Jumper and the barn lighting visible on the screen faded to just the sunlight. John spun the ball around to send it back to the open Jumper gate.

"I told you, I don't know what you want. I don't know how to fly it, and there’s something wrong with it anyway," came Stiles' voice over the little spyball's spy-mic. Sheppard smiled as the kid stepped out onto the ramp, Derek just behind him. It took some effort but Sheppard made sure the mic was off on the orb and tapped into the earpiece radio.

"Stilinski, comms check. Do you read me?"

Stiles stopped arguing - with Ladon Radim, from the looks of it - and looked around until he spotted the spyorb. It was caught out of the air a moment later and Sheppard let it go idle. That seemed a fair confirmation.

"We've got three Genii on the ship. I think we can cover that if you want to head our way," Sheppard said. He waved for Rodney to start setting the cloaked ship down. He checked the life signs on the HUD as an afterthought and the range wasn’t quite the same with Rodney in the pilot’s seat. That was less than ideal. As proof, a team showed up on the edge of the sensors’ range then and John pointed it out quickly to Rodney. The ship raised back in the air.

“Scratch that. You’ve got seven more on their way. Standing by,” Sheppard reported. Stiles swore and started fiddling with the spyball. Radim met them at the bottom of the ramp then and took the orb from Stiles.

“What’s this?” he asked, voice clear as the picture over the metal ball’s sensors.

“Mine,” replied Stiles. “It’s a toy. We have them on Atlantis, too.”

John took back control of the orb and pulled it free of the Genii scientist, sending it buzzing toward Derek’s head instead. The young man looked as irritable as Ronon and Daniel, but he and Stiles were both bruise-free and healthy, so that was one good thing about the crazy spyorbs. Stiles dove for the ball again and it bobbed out of reach on autopilot. Sheppard really liked the mental control panel via the Ancient tech hacking his brain. It worked more reliably than the dials did with his senses and was pretty good for practice, really. The spyorb took care of itself and John wanted badly to take over the ship again but he wasn’t sure he could pull it off. 

“Well? How did it go?” came a new voice through the spyorb’s receivers and even Teyla let out an annoyed sigh at hearing Chief Cowen. 

“The ship is functional if not operational,” reported Radim. “There’s something wrong with the power system.”

“Dr. McKay could fix it, but we can’t,” said Stiles.

“Oh come on, leave me out of this,” muttered Rodney. John rolled his eyes.

“He was telling _us_ that, Mer. You’re fine,” said John. Rodney still made a face but settled down about being ratted out.

“Well, given how badly Ladon has botched this entire project so far, I doubt we’ll be getting Dr. McKay’s assistance with anything, any time soon,” said Cowen.

“That’s a solid bet,” replied Sheppard. Stiles snorted a laugh and John realized belatedly that he had left his radio active. “Oops.”

“Then maybe it’s a good time to send us home,” suggested Derek. It pulled Stiles’ attention back and the teen nodded. 

“We’ll be sure to explain the Jumper thing. I’m sure he’ll show up,” added Stiles.

“Why do people always volunteer my time?” complained Rodney. “I actually have a _job_. I actually _do_ things that are _important_...”

Stiles again struggled to keep a straight face, which probably wasn’t great for their overall situation, but it was at least a good indication that the two teenagers hadn’t been treated badly if the kid was so easily distracted and amused. Derek apparently couldn’t hear the feed over his radio because he kept glancing at Stiles and even the bobbing little spyorb could pick up the confused raised eyebrow. Cowen started talking again so the spyorb spun around to aim the camera at him.

“No, I’m afraid that, to avoid any incident as a result of your presence, I've had to ask for some outside assistance on this. They should be on their way. But we won’t be sending you back,” the chief told their men. Ronon stood up from the chair behind John.

“Enough. Let me out,” he growled. “I’ll give him a damn incident.”

“What the hell kind of outside assistance do they have coming?” Rodney asked at the same time. Sheppard scowled at the screen because the both of them had very good points.

“Stiles, keep the spyball,” John said into the radio. The ball lowered and hovered at Stiles’ eye line.

“What?” he asked, confusion and concern plain as he stared right at the orb.

“We can track it,” Sheppard told him quickly, even as Cowen started answering the teen by explaining that Derek and Stiles were a liability. One that had to be removed from the city until Atlantis looked somewhere else for them. The ball fell into Stiles’ hands as John gave up on multitasking and stood up.

“Give me the ship,” he ordered and Rodney scrambled to oblige.

“What are you doing?” Daniel wanted to know, just as pushy as Ronon about it. Teyla was the only calm one in the forward compartment and she had to be pushing that vibe somehow because John picked up the harsh scent of werewolf and anger split up by a very uniquely calming trace behind him that he knew wasn’t Ronon.

“I’m getting us to where we can watch the damn stargate,” said John. “And if you promise not to get yourselves killed, and to listen to Teyla, then I’ll drop you twenty yards in where you can get in position to handle these guys _and_ get _our_ guys without giving away your location. Got it?”

Ronon and Daniel had a race toward the back of the Jumper as Teyla moved to break into the stash of gear and weapons. The calm vibe disappeared quickly. Rodney dropped into his chair, where he could control basic operations the same as John, just without the argument from the gene that let them do part of the work instinctively.

Sheppard didn’t consider Ladon Radim a threat, so three against nine was actually pretty good odds for his team, especially when they would end up with two werewolves in the mix. The psychological damage from that alone would double their effectiveness. And Stiles was scrappy and knew when to stay out of the way. Sheppard and the Jumper could take care of any problems from the 'gate before the unknown trouble could join the fray.

"I want radio traffic, understood? If we’re not back first, meet us at the 'gate when you're done with these jerks," Sheppard ordered as the Jumper ramp lowered and his team bailed into the safe cover of a grove of trees. It was a risk, no matter what they did, but sitting by and watching two of their team disappear wasn't an option.

~*~*~

The stargate was closed, which meant no radio communication, apparently. And those left behind on Atlantis had to find something to do to fill the time, something that _wasn't_ staring at the stargate and waiting for it to open again, for the team to fly through in the Puddlejumper again.

"This was a stupid idea. We should have gone.”

The complaint was met with quiet. Jim stared at the big empty ring the same as Blair did. He finally grunted his agreement and tugged on Blair's arm to move them past the steps that led up to Operations, away from the gateroom.

"We made the rules," Jim said, the reasoning just an echo of the logic that had trapped them into feeling useless. "And if we can't hold to our own rules, there's no reason for anyone else to listen to us."

"But John seemed fine. Just tired, maybe-"

"Sheppard's been going back and forth through that thing for two years," Jim replied. "And maybe that's all it is. Maybe... Maybe it's a tolerance thing."

Blair considered it. "Fine. Then we should test that."

Jim was wearing sunglasses but Blair was sure he saw the man blink. "What, _now_?"

"Well, why not? Do we have anything better to do?" Blair asked. And they really _didn't_ have anything better to do, considering their entire reason for being in another galaxy had just gone through the stargate without them and, combined with the day before, that had to be some kind of personal record for failure.

"We could, I don't know, _find_ something to do. Or just, not..." Jim shrugged and let it fade off. He wasn't great at sitting still, either, and sensory spike headache or not, doing _nothing_ wasn't going to settle well the longer the team was gone. He looked at Blair. “We fucked up.”

Blair nodded. “Yeah, maybe.”

Jim stopped then and half turned. Blair glanced back over his shoulder to look for whatever he had noticed and soon saw Dr. Weir walking their way from the gateroom.

"Gentlemen," she greeted, though she didn't sound overly cheerful. "Please tell me you signed off on Colonel Sheppard taking his team back through the 'gate."

"We did," said Blair, nodding. "John's been able to handle himself for weeks. It was just Jim having trouble this time."

"Good. It's not that I don't trust him, but lately he's definitely been a little... Off. And I know he's already been dealing with enough, now with two missing? It's not something I've ever seen him handle quietly," said Elizabeth. Blair shifted closer to Jim, suddenly paranoid. He tried to muster up an amused smile.

"You make it sound like a common occurrence," he said. The woman winced.

"It's certainly more common than I would like. Things weren't very exciting while AR-1 was gone because we had the supplies, and after losing another member of the expedition, I didn't want to take the risk of sending any teams through the stargate. And apparently I was right to do so, if _Teyla's_ family-" Elizabeth paused and shook her head. "That's all just to say, we need to reassess the risks. We can get some supplies from the Daedalus and the trading partners we have rather than push for anything new for a while. In the meantime, this is a big galaxy and I don't want to lose anyone else."

"Understandable," said Jim. He set a hand at the back of Blair's neck, tangled in the jacket collar. "That's why Sheppard said it was recon only, right?"

"That was my request, yes," replied Elizabeth. She didn't seem overly confident that it would be honored, but she nodded. "And this is the part where the rest of us sit at home and wonder if Colonel Sheppard's team comes back through or not. Their last few trips have certainly been longer than most." 

"Sheppard can handle his team," said Jim. And it didn't sound like the guy was blowing smoke to make the Director feel better, either. Jim was shit at lying to women; it was why they never stuck around long.

"And Teyla and Rodney can handle their Sentinel," added Blair. "I mean, I wouldn't count on Rodney to find his Zen any time soon, but he and John have their own language going. They can sort out a stakeout, right?" He looked over at Jim then, reconsidering their earlier position. "I mean, I want to be helping somehow, but maybe we made the right call here. Maybe they can test out their old rhythm on this without us in the way. Get some old habits vibing with the new ones..."

Jim shrugged and offered a brief nod. "Maybe. They aren't all teenagers, Chief. We can't do the work for them, even if we had gone along. It gets down to, they'll do what they have to, where they are."

"Right." Blair crossed his arms, leaned back a little against Jim's hold on his neck. His friend met the pressure and kept him upright. The easy support kept them both from overthinking the call. "We'll just... Go on the next one."

"Did Dr. Beckett get you both transmitters?" Elizabeth asked. "Because neither of you leave this city without them."

“Not yet,” said Jim. He studied Blair a moment. “I’m thinking we should get on that while we’ve got the down time.” 

Blair still wasn't a fan of the whole transmitter thing. Not really. But he nodded anyway. “And I wanted to ask Carson about the gene therapy. I know he lost a lot of supplies when the power went out, but if it’s available, I should look into that, too. Might need it.”

"Thinking you want to learn to fly Jumpers, Sandburg?" Jim asked, sounding genuinely surprised. Called out, Blair shrugged. Elizabeth smiled at him and mirrored him.

"I'm sure it can all be arranged. And I'll leave you to it. But thank you. For setting my mind at ease, at least. I appreciate the effort you've put into my team so far," she said.

"Of course," said Jim, smiling, because he was _usually_ helpful when he had a headache.

"Yeah, obviously, any time," added Blair. The Director nodded at them again as she passed and kept walking, turning down one of the other hallways that went nowhere near the infirmary and saving everyone a lot of _awkward_.

When she was definitely gone, Blair snorted a mocking " _Of course_!" at Jim and and shoved at his friend's arm, a half-hearted effort to push him back toward their own destination. Jim let him get a step ahead before catching an elbow over his collar and hugging him under the guise of tormenting him, his other hand scrubbing at Blair's curly hair.

"Grow up," Jim taunted. But he was still being careful, his head still hurt and he was just making an excuse to be in Blair's space.

"Uh huh, will do, big guy," Blair returned, grinning to himself.

~*~*~

“You’re seeing this, right?” the Colonel asked. He sounded angry, that was definitely anger. Maybe a little panic. Rodney stared, wide-eyed, out the front view. “I’m not crazy, we know those uniforms.”

“Yes, we know them. Can we shoot them, now, please? Less talking, more getting rid of them,” replied Rodney. It wasn’t that violence was necessarily his default response to seeing people he didn’t like, but in this particular instance, people he didn’t like were walking through the stargate with express intent to help _more_ people he didn’t like. And that was not acceptable.

“I’ll start shooting when they close the ‘gate and can’t call for more help,” Sheppard muttered at him. But he didn’t seem very content with his own logic. 

Six Daturan uniforms came through the stargate before the wormhole closed. It took all of a minute, perhaps, but it was a very, very long one before the ship let loose a few well-placed drones. Men dodged and scattered and it made the job of pinpointing them with the Jumper drones that much harder. One of them stood boldly on the steps to the stargate and aimed at the Jumper like it had a shot in hell at actually doing damage with their stupid, evil glow-sticks. After a millisecond, Rodney remembered he didn't know the full capacity of those weapons or his ships to fully swear their damn glowstick couldn't take the Jumper down.

"Goddamnit, stay away from the DHD, you silver-coated bastards," John said, scowling out at the clearing below them. Rodney, in a bid to be helpful, punched in the first stargate address he could think of. The event horizon explosion took out the Daturan soldier who was trying to line up a shot on the Jumper. The remaining three soldiers and their glowsticks ran blindly for the active wormhole rather than attack the drone-armed ship hovering over the trees.

Rodney blinked at the mess left behind. John closed the 'gate and turned the ship back around. Over the radio, they heard random shouting and it was time to get back to their team.

"Where did you send those guys?" John asked, and Rodney could have been wrong but the man sounded concerned.

"One of the space gates," said Rodney. "I didn't think they'd just rush it like that."

John nodded his approval. "Six assholes we don't have to deal with on the ground. I'm okay with this."

They were soon hovering, cloaked again, near the barn. Teyla and Ronon were visible on the HUD's lifesigns map just behind the barn, trading fire with Genii guards. In the mere minutes Rodney and John had been taking care of the threat from the stargate, half the Genii had disappeared, along with, apparently, Stiles and Derek. 

"What the hell-" 

Frustrated, John set the Jumper down between his team and the bad guys, trading the cloak for the shields. The ramp was lowered then as John and Rodney stared down a handful of very surprised Genii.

"Ronon! What the hell happened?" John shouted back out of the Jumper. Using the bulk of the Jumper for cover, the pair were headed their way. A bullet ricocheted off the front edge of the top of the Jumper, making Rodney duck instinctively from the sound. Once boots hit the ramp, the shields were back up because the bullets started bouncing back at the shooters. Rodney stared, jaw dropped, as he watched them flatten against the shield and melt away. John looked back at the trees behind them expectantly and then at Teyla and Ronon.

"Where's Daniel? Derek? Stiles?" he wanted to know. Ronon shook his head, the very picture of pissed off.

"Daniel didn't stay with us," said Ronon. 

"They're not coming," Teyla added, nodding toward the open ramp. John swore and shut the ship up tight once more before the Genii decided to start testing the shields from another angle. He swung back to the console and the Jumper lifted back up into the air.

"Dr. Jackson? Somebody better report in," he said, sounding very growly. The HUD screen showed lifesigns on the move and the ship headed off over the heads of the Genii, toward the small village. Their radios crackled with more than just gunfire for once thanks to the interference from the city underground. 

“Look, I’m with them," came Daniel's voice over the earpieces.

Derek's voice joined in. “That’s a bad idea.”

“I think it’s a great idea," said Daniel. The ship brought a small shack into view and idled, cloak once again engaged based on the fact that the group of Genii below them paid no attention whatsoever. Dr. Jackson was being relieved of his P90, his hands in the air. Stiles and the spyball had just disappeared into the ramshackle building with a pushy guard, as Derek and Daniel stood, arms in the air, with Hale blocking Daniel protectively behind him and away from Cowen and three guards.

“Remind me to kill him later," John said, frustration clear. About as the words left his mouth, Derek was pulled away from Daniel and shoved into the building after Stiles. Neither of the two werewolves did anything particularly werewolfy to defend themselves, as far as Rodney could tell. Daniel was shoved to his knees to be checked for weapons and touched his earpiece as he hid it under his hand. 

“I heard that," he complained quietly. 

“Good. you’ll remember to _remind_ me," Sheppard replied. The _What the hell were they supposed to do now?_ went unsaid.

Rodney frowned out the window at the scene unfolding half a football field away. Daniel was dragged back up to his feet and pushed toward the shack the other two had disappeared into. A random, resigned thought made him almost want to laugh. “Well, looks like I’m the only genius on the team again.”

Jackson couldn't be seen but he could still be heard over a crackly radio. “I dunno. Stiles should still get tested.”

“You’re not allowed to talk anymore, Jackson," John ordered, even as Cowen's voice could be heard asking who the hell he was talking to. They idled over the village until the radio went quiet and the signals on the HUD faded out from the interference of the city below. When John pointed the Jumper back toward the stargate, Rodney could practically see the anger on him.

“Now what?” Ronon asked. 

“We park it,” replied John. “Until the rest of us _geniuses_ come up with a better plan than whatever _that one_ was.”

~*~*~


	15. Chapter 15

The rescue didn't feel very rescuey when Stiles was locked up again, down in the jail cells in the underground city. Gold star for trying, but a jail cell was still a jail cell. He had one all to himself this time. Derek had the one next to him, and Daniel the one after that, all lined up in a row with bars and cement in between. Stiles had the spyball and it buzzed around the cell, too big around to fit between them. He tested the radio a few times, both the comm that talked to the whole team, _and_ the channel that relayed through the Lantean filter for the other Sentinel. But there was no luck raising Sheppard.

"Ellison zoned out. He and Blair stayed behind," Daniel explained when Stiles tried both of the other Sentinel on that channel.

"Is he okay?" Derek asked.

"Yeah, he's fine. It was yesterday. Carson still thinks the stargate did it," said Daniel. From where he sat against the opposite wall, Stiles easily saw Derek look over at him through the bars. He was frowning again and Stiles missed the smug grin he had gotten back in the Jumper.

"I don't know, maybe," Derek said, thinking it over. "Stiles was screwed up yesterday after they brought us through the 'gate."

"That was so totally the drugs, don't even start on blaming the 'gate," complained Stiles. He wasn't defensive of the hunk of metal so much as his ability to keep walking through it when they got back to Atlantis. If the team was going to keep leaving through the stargate then he was going to, and no zone outs were going to stop him. 

"We don't know, that's all I'm saying," said Derek.

"And that's why I go where you go, so you can keep me out of the worst of it. It's not a thing," replied Stiles.

"Jim was under for ten minutes, guys. With Blair _right_ there," said Daniel. Stiles couldn't see him, but he could hear him clear and loud, and the doc was just suggesting caution. But it was still annoying. Stiles scratched at the bracelets on his wrists. 

"I think I'm getting a rash," he reported, intentionally derailing the conversation entirely. Derek moved toward the bars that separated them and leaned on the wall, his hands draped into the cell. He waved Stiles toward him.

"Then stop scratching at it, idiot," he ordered.

"Oh, like _you_ know what to do with it if it is," replied Stiles. He stayed where he was, slouched against the wall, hiding behind his knees. "There's something weird down here anyway. Everything itches."

"Radiation," Daniel said. Derek pushed away from the wall to look back at him.

"What?"

"That's part of the problem with getting you out of here. The Daedalus can't even get clear readings on anything because the Genii nuclear program is underdeveloped and moving the wrong way. The radiation interferes with sensors, radios, everything," said Daniel. Stiles did stand up then and crossed to the other side of the cell. He could hear both of their heartbeats, and Daniel wasn't lying and Derek's had just gone panicked.

"So what's that mean for us?" Stiles asked, catching one of the rusted bars. Daniel stared back at him from across Derek's cell, leaned against the bars like he was used to the accommodations. He shrugged.

"It means down here, they can't help us. And Cowen was lying to Weir so Sheppard's hands are tied," he said. "And the longer we're down here, the more radiation we're... marinating in. Which, you know, _that_ can't be good."

Stiles felt his skin crawling and imagined that he was turning green fairly easily. "What's that do with the ATA?"

"No idea," Daniel said quickly.

"Why the hell did you surrender then?" Derek asked. And it was probably relevant, but Stiles was staring at a freckle on the back of his hand and very concerned that it might possibly be mutating shapes.

"Because if they send you through the stargate somewhere, like Cowen said he would have to, we've got two werewolves to even the odds. One of whom actually knows how to work a DHD and get back to Atlantis," replied Daniel. He kept his voice down that time and it took a moment to sink in past Stiles' growing panic. "And for what it's worth, I've got a transmitter."

So, in _theory_ , the team could find them, once they got away from the interference underground. The question of whether or not Sheppard was looking for them had been answered, so between Daniel, and the little spyball tapping against the bars up over their heads, they would be able to track them wherever they ended up. The panic about the radiation backed off a little. Stiles still reached through the bars to catch Derek's arm and tug at him, the closest part of him he could reach. He backed up and slid his hand into Stiles' instead of his dirty shirt sleeve.

Stiles kept his hearing up too loud, intentionally, tracking Derek as something to think about that wasn't radiation poisoning and _interplanetary_ relocation. Their team would be able to track them. And the Genii wanted people who could work the Lantean technology, anyway, so aside from the inconvenience of rampant nuclear radiation, they were safe by default. As proven by the bodies Radim's men had swept out of the damaged Jumper with brooms, dead men couldn't turn the lights on. That was, frankly, a much better safety guarantee than Stiles had ever gotten from the Hunters as a human in a wolf pack back home; so far, he was maybe coming out ahead.

Eventually Radim showed up again. He looked frazzled and rumpled. This time, his attention went directly to Daniel. Stiles let go of Derek to let him track the trouble in his own way, while he put his back to the stone wall across the cell where he could cut down on some of the echo in the room and better see around the cement sections of the cells. Derek moved to the middle of his cell, out of the way but ready to act. If he had to.

But Radim made no move to hassle Daniel. He just wanted to know who he was, why he was there, and was he from Atlantis. That question seemed to surprise Daniel.

"No, actually. Why?" the man replied. Stiles was confused by the answer.

"Because the other two were," replied Radim. "And we need to know how many to expect. More than just Sheppard and McKay?"

"Well, I would guess it's a possibility," replied Daniel easily. "But I wouldn't know. I was just along for the ride, like these two." He swayed a little where he stood near the bars by Derek's cell, nodding back toward him and Stiles.

"I told you, you should have just asked politely," Stiles offered up. Radim glared at him only briefly, his attention mostly still on Daniel.

"Are you like Stiles and Colonel Sheppard?" Radim asked.

"No, I'm like Derek," said Daniel. Again, the caution in his voice and the very careful response. He was either trying to figure Radim out, or he already had and was just mocking his paranoia, Stiles couldn't tell which. He was used to Daniel being level headed, not impulsive and irritated. The Colonel usually threatened to kill _Stiles_ later, not Daniel as they had all heard on the radio. But Stiles didn't know what to expect from Daniel and the Bad Guys.

"He's already got one. You're saying he needs two, now?" Radim asked, clearly frustrated. Stiles nodded automatically.

"I told you I needed my team," he said. He could back Daniel up; keep it simple and they couldn't get caught on the lie. 

"Yes, but you aren't sick _now_ ," Radim replied. It was a complaint. And he wasn't a stupid man. 

"It would be nice to keep it that way," said Derek. "That's why he has two Guides. He's new to all of it. We need help to keep him from getting sick like yesterday."

Radim muttered something about being trouble and then turned to leave. Part of Stiles really wanted to make the man's day worse and ask when they were getting lunch, but he figured it would get him poisoned again and kept quiet. It was probably for the best that he hadn't smarted off because Radim stopped at the gate to his cell and the soldier with him started scrounging for keys. Stiles grabbed the spyball but hung back, not volunteering to go anywhere.

"Come on then," Radim said. He was still annoyed but it wasn't the same frustration that had been aimed at Daniel.

"Hey, now, wait-" Daniel went quiet when he realized Derek hadn't moved. Stiles' Guide stood still, his eyes glancing from Stiles to Radim, his arms still crossed as he took up the middle of his cell. They had been split up before and it had been okay. Derek was just waiting for Stiles to say it wasn't before he would make that call. Once they showed their hand, there was no putting the werewolf aces back up their sleeves; they would have exactly one shot at that surprise working to get them out of trouble, and none of them were exactly experts on even getting out of the underground city.

Stiles turned his attention back to the Genii at the gate. Radim started to step aside to send the soldier in but Stiles shook his head and moved away from the wall. "Fine. I'm coming already."

He toyed with the metal ball in his hands as they walked the halls that made up the city. They weren't going up to the surface this time. The nervousness set in and Stiles began to regret his life choices. Another few hallways later and Stiles was left in a room by himself, no cells, just a plain room with books and a desk and some creepy looking wall tapestry. The only thing the room had going for it was the lack of buzzy, overhead lighting. There were lanterns instead, with actual flame-candles inside that smelled like some kind of animal grease. It was quieter, darker, and generally easier on the senses than the cells had been. It even had comfy chairs. But it didn't have Derek.

"Why am I down here?" Stiles asked as Radim turned to leave him on his own in the office-like room.

"A precaution," replied the scientist. And he left then. It didn't take any effort at all to hear the key turn in the lock on the door. Stiles crashed onto the padded bench that was something like a couch. It was better than the stone floor, but the room was still cold. And Stiles' skin still itched. And there was definitely some kind of rash happening under the stupid leather cuffs. 

There were eight hallways between him and Derek. It wasn't excessively far. When they let him out again, Stiles was sure he would be able to find his way back to him. Getting back up to the village was more complicated, but maybe they could do it, between the three of them. After tossing the ball up into the air to let it float around again, Stiles scrubbed at his face, frustrated. They should have tried it, should have run.

The longer the door stayed closed, the lower the candles in the room got. They weren’t close to going out or anything, they had inches of wax to burn through, but Stiles still stared at them. They were going to go out eventually. He looked around the walls for a lightswitch but there was nothing he recognized as one. And it wasn’t like he was dealing with Atlantis, he couldn’t just ask the lights to turn on. An idea struck and he chased the spyball around until he could catch it. He started searching the grooved surface of the ball for anything like a control panel, just in case he could work the thing without the controller tablet. 

“Come on, I just want a flashlight,” he muttered at it. And then suddenly the ball started glowing. It surprised him enough that Stiles dropped the orb and let it float around again. He smiled up at the little luminescent moon. With a thought, just like the lights on Atlantis, the light flicked off again. “Okay. I like this. Options are good.”

The threat of getting stuck in the dark had pushed Stiles close to a panic and he figured out how to back himself away from it. He was proud of himself for that. Remembering the video capacity on the orb, he tried to tap into it, asking to connect to the comms channel. It broadcast his voice back at him from the embedded speakers, with their metallic tang hanging on every pitch, so the experiment was short-lived. But the ball bobbed and aimed it’s little pinpoint white light at him when he talked, like this piece of technology was paying attention, so Stiles talked to it to keep himself company. He decided to start calling it Beeper because of the tiny mechanical noises it made when it redirected itself, up or down or any other direction. But even Beeper was only so amusing. 

Stiles cast his hearing outside the room, listening for other signs of human life close by. He heard the echo of air and far away machines, the flicker and crackle of the candles around him, and entire teams of footsteps from different directions but none of them near him. He heard heartbeats and voices through the noise, just not the one he was looking for. And Stiles knew what he was doing was risky but he kept chasing it anyway; a zone out was just another way to kill time and he could still breathe through them... mostly. He could handle it, he wasn’t afraid of it, so he could take the chance.

It was the candles that pushed him over, tracking sound and smelling the smoke and watching the light dance ten feet away from him. All three at once boosted him right into a hyper-focus on sight, which was not what Stiles wanted to focus on at all, really. The room was all shadows and drab, archaic decorating design, nothing interesting at all. But suddenly Stiles could see the individual crevices of the cement-lined walls, with the dried air pockets between grains of hardened sand. The candle light was bright as day and Stiles was stuck on the nuance of visual texture across the room from him. 

He was pretty sure he was still breathing. And Beeper hovered somewhere over him because the shadows he stared at would have the random interference of a shiny blue metal so smooth he couldn't see any rough patches. He could hear the beep-whirr of the internal mechanisms and the gush of air as it bobbed around. Stiles was able to keep chasing details because he was fine, stuck in a box, with no threats around him. But he couldn't control what he stared at, he couldn't pull out of the zone to look around and keep the hyper-focus on the microscopic detail. That was frustrating. Blair had tried to work with them on using the zone outs, but Stiles always slipped too far under, focused too hard and forgot how to move, how to function as anything other than a brain chasing input. And it was happening again. _Shit_.

There was a moment of sensation that Stiles couldn't identify. Something that brushed against him and could be felt over the prickling of the poisoned air in the underground city. And Stiles could track it. It hit his ankle and then his knee and his thigh and shoved into his chest and under his arm. The color of his vision changed to a sharp and clear white-blue at the edge and pointed lines poked into view. Like ears. _Fox_ ears. And then a rounded nose touched his chin and shoved just enough to turn his head. Slouched back against the wall on the alien couch, by himself in the room, Stiles sat zoned out and focused his attention on the door across the room because the fox nose had turned his head that way. Normally, Derek couldn't even turn his head when he was zoned, his body was always locked up, wherever he had been when it hit. 

The fox ducked between his knee and the arm that rested over it and poked his nose at Stiles' face again. It wasn't really a fox, though, because Stiles could see through it. He saw red and black fur under a wash of white-blue energy, he saw keen black and brown eyes, but he could still see the wood grain of the heavy door that locked the world out of his quiet space. But he felt the pressure of the animal in his space, added to the sensory input of everything else, the knobby paws dug into his chest and just above his gut, the heavier weight wedged against his thigh. Stiles had all of the fox registering in his head like something he saw in his peripheral; there, but hard to focus on even when it was right in front of him.

He tried to turn his head and focus on it and felt the zone out back off, the tunnel-vision fade, as he looked to the animal in his lap. He felt his lungs fill back up with air and consciously remembered to breathe. It hurt a little, so Stiles figured he had maybe pushed too hard. But... He could see the fox. And he could focus his hearing like he wanted to, despite the fact that he was focused on an imaginary animal staring at him nose to nose. Stiles very clearly heard Derek's heartbeat, heard his voice. He was still in the echo-chamber of the jail cells, and he was talking. He was exasperated about something. But Stiles could hear him. The fox yipped and laughed at him, distracting Stiles from whatever Derek was complaining about. He heard footsteps, very clearly on the approach, and so loud that it caused a rumble in his head.

"Look, it would be nice to avoid _permanent_ damage to the alliance, right?" 

The loud voice surprised Stiles and he ducked under his arms, just to be laughed at by the fox still in his lap. The hyper-focus had to be turned down as Stiles' conscious mind resumed control. The dials went down to a tolerable level. The fox in his lap grumbled approvingly, even head-butted him and jumped over his arm to sit beside him. He wasn't a calm sitter, dug at the cushions and pounced a few times, but he stayed completely visible. Stiles stared, mouth hanging open.

The footsteps stopped at his door. Stiles stood up when the door was unlocked. He was surprised to see Lt. Colonel Sheppard get shoved inside. Immediately afterward, the door was yanked closed and locked again, which, comparatively wasn't a surprise at all. Sheppard looked back at the door, resigned, before looking over at Stiles. 

"Don't tell me. They took a page from Sandburg and Sentinel have a time-out box," the Colonel said. Stiles shook his head. The fox beside him yawned dramatically and John tilted his head, almost looked surprised, but Stiles told himself the man couldn't really see the fox that had claimed the couch.

"This isn't my fault," he promised, rather than go anywhere near questions about the fox. "Ladon said it was a precaution. Whatever that means."

"It means they're a pain in the ass and they know things, that's what," said Sheppard. He poked around the room, checking the walls, squinting up at the ceiling, taking books off the room's bookshelf. 

"You look okay though. You guys good?" he asked. Stiles nodded.

"They drugged us to get us through the stargate, but I think that's gone now," he reported.

"I kinda doubt that, but we'll go with your theory," said John. If he was looking for something in the room, he didn't seem to find it. The Colonel dropped down onto the front edge of the desk to be social. He glanced from Stiles to the fox and back ever so briefly. "You _do_ see that, right?"

It was kind of a relief and Stiles bobbed his head quickly. "It... I zoned out and the fox pulled me out of it. Right before you got here."

"Oh, that's a handy trick. Now I want one," said Sheppard. "It'd make McKay feel better."

"You've got one... Rodney has the raven," Stiles pointed out. Sheppard pulled a face, shook his head.

"Birds aren't exactly zone-out-cuddly. I'm not sure I want a bird beak snapping me out of anything," he replied. Stiles wasn't sure how to explain it and mentally floundered a little.

"And, before you ask, yes, this was the rescue plan, so we're obviously playing things by ear. If we're not out of here on our own in a few hours, Ronon's doing things his way," said Sheppard, changing the subject. "Which may or may not involve things blowing up, so keep the dials down."

“I’m okay with that,” replied Stiles, nodding his enthusiasm for being anywhere else. “Just so long as the blowing things up doesn’t mean nuclear...”

“We were thinking more like the village would cease to exist because we’re tired of Cowen’s shit,” said Sheppard. He offered a shrug. “But as backwards as these guys are, we can’t rule it out as a possibility.”

Stiles’ smile faded. “That... doesn’t make me feel better.”

“We’re a little rusty. We’ve been out of this game for a few months now. Cut us some slack,” Sheppard replied. The man scrubbed at his face and seemed to have to shake everything off. Things obviously hadn’t gone according to any plan. They just... were. That was something familiar and Stiles sighed, nodded. He dropped onto the edge of the desk to commiserate their unknown fate as Genii light switches instead of Atlantis’ favorite useful idiots.

“They want the Jumper to work,” he offered up. “But there’s something wrong with the energy stabilizers or something.”

“Yeah, McKay was thrilled when you volunteered him for fixing it. Thanks for that, by the way,” replied Sheppard, grinning. 

“I didn’t think he’d show up to do it,” Stiles pointed out. 

“He almost didn’t. I almost had him convinced to stay and run the Jumper,” Sheppard replied. He shook his head, annoyed. “Similar to how we _almost_ made it all the way to the cells before we ran into trouble. So if we can track fresh air, we can probably get out of here.”

“What? You got to the cells- how?”

“The guys kinda smell like werewolves right now...” Sheppard tapped his nose in explanation. “So Ronon and Teyla ran a distraction, Rodney and I just got as far down here as we could tracking them.”

Stiles slouched on the desk as he considered it. “Huh. I didn’t notice.”

“You wouldn’t notice. That’s your baseline,” replied the Colonel. “But trust me. They are _unique_.”

Surprised, Stiles started sniffing at his own jacket, just to see if he could pick up the different scent even though it had been some time since he had been near Derek. Sheppard caught sight of his arm then and reached out to catch his sleeve. 

“What the hell-” He seemed concerned about the cuffs, so Stiles showed him.

“Yeah, they’re annoying. I think I’m getting a rash. They have these chains that lock on in between...” Stiles said, tugging at the metal loop built into the weird leather. The Colonel nodded and frowned but let go of his overshirt. 

“Yeah. I’m familiar,” he replied. “The Genii are working with the Daturans. That’s where those things came from. And the guys we got rid of at the stargate were Daturan.” 

"Got rid of?"

"Yeah. It was handled. Cowen will be waiting a while for that backup he mentioned. And if we're lucky, they'll notice he didn't send their troops home after he borrowed them," said Sheppard. He saw the confusion on Stiles' face and simplified it. "There's more bad guys. And that rash is going to take a few days to go away once the cuffs are off. We'll need the Daedalus for it."

Stiles had opinions and complaints about that news, but noise in the hallway distracted them from the cuffs. Beeper zoomed over to the door as it opened, shining the little pin-light in their guards' faces, dodging as it got swatted at and pinging up to the ceiling, bobbing out of reach. Chief Cowen didn't seem to appreciate the welcome.

"Chief Cowen, great timing," said Sheppard with false cheer. He stayed where he was, leaned on the desk, and crossed his arms. "Find out who made those _arrangements_ yet? Pretty sure I've got an idea."

"And I've got someone to fix the flying ship and someone to fly it, so I think I've got an idea which one of the two of you are expendable," replied Cowen. He seemed a lot happier about the whole situation than Sheppard was.

"The kid doesn't know how to fly it, so until I can teach him, you're stuck with me. Unless you want McKay to fix the Jumper, just to have it crashed. I guess it's yours, you can do what you want, but that seems a waste," Sheppard replied. 

"So is the amount of work necessary to keep two Guardians here, after the trouble just one has been," replied Cowen. That surprised the Colonel and he looked to Stiles.

"Have _you_ been causing trouble?"

"They poisoned me, not my fault," replied Stiles. The report satisfied Sheppard and he returned his attention to Cowen and the guard who had crowded into the room.

"That's the problem. Easy solution then. Don't poison your prisoners and they won't cause trouble," said the Lt. Colonel. "I tried to tell your new friends that a few months ago but they still kept at it. And then their prisoners organized a riot and burned half a continent. Hopefully you're smarter than the Daturan Proctors. And, you know, there's the whole matter of the alliance..."

"I think we can call that dissolved," replied Cowen.

"Why? Because you're friendly with the Daturans?" Sheppard asked. "I hate to break it to you, but those guys are playing you for your bounty scheme."

"Hardly," said Cowen. "We came to a prosperous agreement between our people."

Sheppard shook his head, nearly laughed. "They have floating jail boxes and weapons you haven't even dreamed of. They want minerals and metals, not food. The Genii have nothing of value to trade with them. Or did you overlook that when they showed up offering gifts for your prison cells?"

Cowen crossed his arms as he considered what Colonel Sheppard said. "How would you know this?"

The Colonel stood up then, hands in his pockets as he squared up with the Genii commander. "Because the problem with putting my face out there with your name attached means that anybody looking for me is gonna start with you."

"What did you do to the Daturans?" asked Cowen, eyebrow raised in interest.

"Burned up their prison planet." 

"So you think they want you returned to it," said the Chief. Sheppard offered a shrug.

"Don't know. We didn't keep in touch. But it makes more sense than their highly advanced and self-sufficient culture taking a sudden interest in your tava beans."

"Then I'm sure they'll appreciate taking you back," replied Cowen. "Saves me the trouble."

"The last time they sent you men, not one in six made it home. I'm not sure how friendly they'll be next time you chat," said Sheppard. "And that's a shame, seeing as how their weapons are more advanced than even those on Atlantis. They aren't people you want to make enemies out of like that."

"What are you talking about?"

"Talking about the blood bath on the steps of your stargate and the Daturan uniforms left behind. Killing their guys and then asking for favors is probably not the best way to stay on their good side," replied Sheppard.

This was all apparently news to Cowen and the man blustered and scowled and decided that he would personally follow up on the situation at the stargate before making any decisions. That sounded like a smart idea to Stiles and he managed not to laugh as the Chief and his soldier hurried from the room. He was still left behind in a locked office, but the bad guys stench had cleared out.

"Now what?" he asked. The Colonel paced to the couch, checking all around it for signs of glowing foxes before sitting down.

"Now we wait. Teyla and Ronon have all the C4. These guys confiscated mine."

Stiles stared, jaw slack, as he realized his weird little supernatural world now came with playing lightswitch for alien spaceships _and_ the casual application of C4.

~*~*~

The radiation buzz was annoying. It made Derek irritable, but part of his general bad mood was likely due to the noticeable absence of the ever annoying Stiles Stilinski. It had been over a month since Derek had gone so much as five hours without tripping over Stiles, and now, thanks to the Genii, he had spent the better part of twenty-four hours wondering where he was. Derek found himself in a cage the hunters back home would have loved to lay claim to, irritable and worrying about the health and safety of, and actively missing the energy and noise that was, Stiles. _That_ was beyond annoying. He paced from the back wall of his cell to the gate and back, distracted, preoccupied, and feeling... hungry.

“Is that absolutely necessary?” came a voice from the cell that had been occupied by Stiles a few hours earlier. McKay was definitely not Stiles, though they seemed to both compete to be the most loud-and-annoying on occasion. Derek glared over at the scientist.

“What?”

“The pacing and the random growling?” replied McKay with a wave. Derek frowned at him.

“I wasn’t growling-”

“Not you.” Rodney waved again but looked around him at Daniel in the opposite cell. Derek glanced over at the other werewolf and noticed that Daniel had been pacing just as he had been. There were noticeable scratch marks on the man’s neck and arms, not deep enough to heal. The radiation of the underground was getting to him, too, but it was probably a little more than that. 

“Daniel,” Derek said, just trying to get the man’s attention. The guy was older, smarter, and pretty easy going, Derek was used to being hands-off when having to work with him on the werewolf stuff. But Daniel Jackson was enough of a pacifist that the uncontrolled werewolf shift had scared him off of practicing with the beta shift. He had managed it once over the month but they were always around people, the threat of either harming people or being caught out on the Daedalus’ security system had kept him to only partial shifts that Daniel could control completely. And now the man was a month without practice, staring down at least a single full moon, underground, surrounded by some kind of poisonous radiation that was eating at _Derek's_ control. Daniel just looked up at Derek with his usual unassuming surprise, like he wasn't going slowly insane.

"When's the last time you shifted?" Derek asked.

"A week ago. Elizabeth's office?" Daniel replied. There was a flash of annoyance on his face, like Derek should have known the answer rather than ask it. Derek nodded. 

"That's a problem," he said. Daniel didn't like that. 

"Look, I can handle it," he replied. Derek motioned to his arms. 

"Not for long. Either you control the shift or it controls you, and we didn't get to work on this like we had planned," he pointed out. "So the way this is going, one way or another, you're going to rage."

"What's that mean?" asked Rodney, voice pitched a little loud from sudden concern. Derek looked back at the wary scientist.

"It means it’s been building for a month, so you're not going to like it any more than he does and you're going to have to do what I tell you," said Derek. No pressure or anything on him for having let it get that bad to start with. Rodney was wide-eyed and pale but surprisingly just nodded.

"Meaning you do your wolfy thing and clear the path to get the rest of us out of here?" he asked. Derek nodded, though Daniel was less agreeable to the plan.

"I'm not sure that's a great idea..."

"It's literally the only one we had left," said Rodney, much to Derek and Daniel's mutual surprise. "They called in the Daturans as backup. If we left to get back to Atlantis, you would be gone and we don't know how many hidey-hole prison planets those jerks have. You two, doing your thing, that's the only real option we had for a plan F."

"F, as in, _Fail_?" replied Daniel.

"Hey! If John could bloodhound his way to you two, I don't see why you can't do the same thing to get us out of here," said Rodney. "At least to get us to the Sentinel. Then between the two of them, we should be able to find our way out of this maze."

Derek stared at him. "I honestly can't tell you how bad that plan is."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "See my _first_ point where this was the _last_ plan available under the circumstances."

Derek looked over at Daniel. "We get one shot at this," he reminded him. "We either go now while you're still in there, or we wait until the moon has you."

"I don't know if I'll stay in here," Daniel said, shaking his head.

"It's been almost a month. Moonrise or not, you're running out of time to experiment anyway," Derek replied. "I guarantee you, it's going to hit you whether you know what you're doing or not. And we don't have a lab to lock you up in and collect any _data_."

Daniel grabbed the bars between them and tugged. "Maybe not, but we've got these."

"Those won't hold you. The only reason they work now is you don't know what you can do yet," replied Derek. Daniel tilted his head, curious under the confusion. Derek caught one of the bars on his side of the cement wall between them and pulled, testing it. He glanced back at the door, then, while they didn't have any guards to worry about, he jerked the rebar out of the lower part of the wall and bent it back. It was old and well-seated, tougher than he had expected it would be, but it yielded and turned drastically out of the way. Daniel's eyes went wide. Behind him, Rodney backed away from the wall between them.

"I can do that?" Daniel asked, momentarily dumb. Derek nodded.

"The gates will be easier. The only hard part is keeping your head and not going after the good guys," he said.

"Please don't go after the good guys," added Rodney. Daniel’s curiosity faded under the worry.

“You won’t go after the good guys,” Derek said, dead serious and firm on that point. He motioned to the bent bar between them. “I won’t let you. You’ll be fine. They’ll be fine.”

After another minute of consideration, Daniel finally nodded. “Right. I can do this.”

Leaving Daniel to work himself into being able to shift, Derek crossed back to the other side of the cell to look in on Rodney. He pointed the man toward the corner furthest away from the cell door. “Stay back. And when we get out... stay behind me.”

~*~*~


	16. Chapter 16

As the early morning wore on, Sheppard and his team stayed gone. He had apparently given Dr. Weir the impression that he wanted to be back before breakfast, but breakfast came and went without so much as a peep from the stargate. The woman didn't seem overly surprised by the failed plans though she was certainly anxious about it. 

But the city went on around them anyway. The Director was moving people back, Jumper-full at a time, as the different sections came back online and the city deigned to communicate with the Milky Way computer consoles and meet the basic minimum functionality requirements to support large groups of humans. The Atlantis skeleton crew staff was slowly padding out and the city was getting noisier. Jim started to lose the steady buzz of static from the city itself under the sounds of people populating the city. By ten AM, the city had gone from forty people wandering around to instead over a hundred voices and footfalls and busy-making as people tried to get back to their lives. For Jim, it sounded like he had stuck his head in a bell and somebody had kicked the lower edge from the outside. 

"This is going to take some getting used to," Jim muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose and trying to make his shoulders relax. The ambiance of the city was stronger than that of the Daedalus had been, after the last few days of _natural_ sensory immersion. It wasn't entirely new to him, he had always lived in big cities and quiet ones bugged him, but the city-ship felt different. It felt alive, strangely, and like a blend of intentional stereo-static and metal reverb. It was a network of hallways that served as sound conduits, which, Zelenka had offered helpfully, made sense due to the fact that the hallways were intended to be electrical conduits of a sort and the material that moved lightning energy would be somewhat responsive to general sound and movement activity. Blair looked from the scientist to Jim, eyes wide. The city had one helluva learning curve.

To fight back, Blair asked for access to the Database, and the quietest room possible to dig through it from. And Zelenka hooked them up. Jim wasn't a lot of help at the Database search but he very much appreciated the quiet room Zelenka pointed them to. Blair didn't voice his opinion because he dove into research mode and wasn't likely to be heard from again for at least a few hours. Jim squinted at the screen with the foreign symbols in front of him out of sheer boredom.

Languages were Blair’s thing. Jim could figure them out when he was immersed in them, sure, but the written language was another matter. The only reason he hadn’t gone insane the last few years working and reporting to a military chain of command that required the occasional written report was that, as the Sentinel, he wasn’t the one writing the damn reports. Sandburg got those, and when he was too busy, Jim drafted them and Blair fixed them, and their signatures sat together on the affidavit lines on the bottom. It kept Jim from having to worry about the written word in English, and that at least made sense to him, right to left, top to bottom. The whole _English_ thing was not how the Ancients’ Database worked.

“This is interesting,” Blair piped up, for the tenth time in an hour, and started to once again impart more information from the archives than Jim would have been able to translate on his own in a week. He rambled off something about the mineral content of the walls that made up the city and the various sources of where it had once been found. “This makes sense. The Lanteans had resources for mining. I mean, of course, they would have had to. You just don’t think about it when all you see is the finished result, some thousands of years later. Can you imagine what must have been required for processing this stuff into a city-ship, man? Like, what kind of operations base that must be? Damn.”

It sounded like a lot of work that Jim didn’t want to really think about, considering he had watched entire tables and benches seemingly materialize out of the floor in the city, so the notion that the air that had turned into a piece of furniture might have come from some special kind of rock on another planet or something was a bit more brain-bending than Jim was interested in pursuing at the moment. He grunted at the news and pretended to be focused on trying to translate a little squiggly block-mark on the screen, one that he was only eighty-percent certain was the Lantean version of the word “blue” but was determined not to have to ask.

“Wasn’t there supposed to be some kind of translation program on this stuff?” he asked instead, his voice probably more frustrated than he intended.

“Yeah, but the Database is huge and apparently very redundant. So the program has only been applied to certain sections so far, kinda like a magnifying glass that can only cover a page at a time. And the linguists were gonna stay on the mainland for another few days because of some project they got into with the Athosians,” reported Blair. He shrugged it off. “I can figure this out, I’m sure.”

Jim shook his head and bit back a sigh. That wasn’t going to help him any, but yeah, he was sure Blair could figure it out, too. Five minutes later, however, Jim was rethinking his policy as Blair started swearing and digging through the pages in his language notebook. 

“What?” he asked.

“This. The Daturans were a mining source. Datura is as old as the Lanteans!” said Blair. He was wide eyed and seemed shocked. Jim felt like he was missing something.

“So? From what I recall, Datura is on the no-go list. We tend to not be friendly with planets that are intent on locking up our teams in prison camps,” replied Jim. Blair nodded and tapped at the screen he was reading.

“Tell me about it. This is the stuff they were working on, man. I mean, no guarantees, it’s obviously been a few thousand years, but the Daturans were trading partners, for the ore that the Lanteans converted to the city. That much is right here, on the screen,” said Blair. Jim leaned his elbows on the console edge and looked over at Blair expectantly.

“Still waiting for the punchline here, Chief,” Jim said. Blair waved him off, still reading something from the screen. Taking that as a dismissal, Jim went back to trying to translate the other words he didn’t know on his own console screen. Blair was quiet for perhaps another minute.

“So get this,” he went on, barely paying attention to the fact that Jim was still in the room aside from the fact that he was talking out loud to him. “The Daturans were interested in science, too. But they were looking more into, like, what we would call alchemy, like changing mineral properties from one state to another on a whim, or long life, like using it to create their own fountain of youth. They did a buncha stuff with native plants that they traded with the Lanteans. Like medicines and that.”

“Okay,” replied Jim, but he kept his head down and tried to focus on his own self-appointed project.

“Jim. Jim, man. They were working on stuff with the Wraith.”

That got Jim’s attention. “What, _with_? With, like _allies_?”

Blair shook his head. He stood up suddenly. “I can’t be reading this right. We need Elizabeth.”

“Seriously, Sandburg? Give it a rest,” Jim complained, shaking his head. His Guide was still determined to give him crap about _making faces_ and now he was going to try to drag the Database and aliens into his newest never ending joke...

“No, Jim, I’m serious here. This... this is not making sense,” replied Blair. He was serious though, and Jim chanced actually looking up at him rather than ignore the taunt. Blair was scared off the topic of the Wraith rather easily, but this time he was just scared.

“Look, settle down. We just got here, there’s a lot we don’t know,” he reminded the man. “And a lot about the Wraith we don’t know. This is probably just stuff that’s new to us...”

Blair shook his head adamantly “No way. Rodney would have mentioned this. They were with these guys for weeks... this would be relevant. I am ninety percent sure they don’t know this.”

“They’re not exactly here to ask.”

“So? You heard John and Ronon the other night. When he gets back to work, the negotiations with Datura are back on the table, and this... If I’m reading it right, this changes the scope of that. Massively.” Sandburg was definitely worked up about and he stared at Jim, still trying to get him to believe him. The problem was, of course, that Jim still didn’t know what the guy was talking about.

“How?” he asked. 

“If I’m reading this right? Those mines? Used to be _worked_ by the wraith,” he said. He glanced at the screen again, as though confirming his notes. He pointed at a few lines. “There’s a chance they still could be.”

That sounded like a lot of bad news, once Blair finally got to the point of it. Jim stood then. “Then let’s go get someone with answers.”

~*~*~

Werewolves were terrifying. That was all there was to it and Rodney McKay, who happened to be a genius, could not for the life of him actually wrap his superior brain processes around the actual existence of the scene that unfolded beyond the bars of his jail cell. He could accept it happened, but he couldn’t explain how, which was a personal insult and frustration.

He had seen a human turn into a wolf before and he had convinced himself there was some trick of the light involved, that somehow Derek Hale just kept a miniature in his pocket and hit it with an enlarging ray gun before hiding under the table whenever the wolf walked into the room. Something. _Anything_ that made more sense than watching the human body morph and change into something that looked only slightly on the same evolutionary path as what it started out as. Rodney could explain away the existence of wraith with evolution because, while they were monsters who fed on people, they didn’t change. Werewolves... the human body wasn’t designed to sprout and retract fangs. Or sideburns. Maybe especially sideburns, because how did hair follicles just disappear back into the skin? That wasn’t how hair worked, that wasn’t how skin worked...

It was fully fair to say that Rodney was panicked as he watched the two adult humans twist and shift and become completely unrecognizable. It didn’t help when Derek grabbed the gate of his cell and curled it off the hinges like he was rolling a sheet of plastic. The door warped and hung from the chain as Derek the werewolf walked out of the cell. One more over from him, Daniel Jackson had turned into a slightly taller, blonder version of Derek, with the bad dental work and furry sideburns. He wasn’t content to curl the door up like a wad of trash, _oh no_. Jackson grabbed hold of the door and yanked the gate from the hinges with a loud clanking clash of movement and sound. It slammed into the opposite wall of the cell, sending bits of rock flying. Rodney ducked on instinct, despite the fact that there were half-solid walls between him and the noise. 

He looked up to see Derek at the gate of his cell and hung back, very uncertain about the wisdom of their plan if it involved him standing anywhere near saber-toothed versions of his teammates. Daniel looked like he was having trouble breathing, his shoulders rising and falling raggedly as he seethed. He stared at his own hands and the too-tight fit of his jacket that had fit normally a moment ago. Until he got to a mirror, Rodney figured the anthropologist was missing out on the worst of the damage.

“It’ll go back to normal,” he said, bravely reminding himself of that fact out loud just in case it helped Daniel to hear it, too. Rodney had seen the alphas shifted like Derek and Daniel now were, but he hadn’t the first clue if he was lying about what would happen to them. He had only seen Derek as a four legged wolf before and for all Rodney knew, there was a big difference. Maybe Carson could explain everything in a way that made sense; Rodney was spinning in circles trying to logic his way around what he was seeing. The fact that Derek ripped a second door off the metal hinges was not lost on Rodney then, the second one in under a minute, and that... was not a normal human strength capacity. _Wraith_ could do that. Humans... shouldn’t.

When the gate was out of the way, Derek shoved into Daniel to push him toward the door out into the hallway. With his attention instead on the edible, squishy human in the cell that Derek had just opened, Daniel shoved back and tried to get Hale out of the way. _Oh shit._ Did werewolves get hungry? Was that how that worked? Rodney tried to shove himself into the rocks at the back of the cell as the werewolves scuffled in front of the open cell. Derek had the upper hand of experience and, with an actual _roar_ that was entirely unnecessary and loud, sent Daniel sprawling, sliding across the floor on his back until he curled a shoulder into their exit. The door was metal. Daniel left a dent. He stood up and didn’t seem to notice the damage. He got with the program then and pulled the door open by wrenching the bar handle, making the door buckle and very effectively disengaging the lock without tearing the door from the wall like they had the cell gates.

Derek had said to stay behind him, so Rodney risked leaving the cell when the other two left the room. By then, even he could hear the clamor of confused Genii in the halls wanting to know where the roaring had come from. They were very quickly running out of time, so Rodney stayed as close behind the others as he dared, given the proximity of claws and teeth apparently designed to rip flesh.

“Just as a reminder, we’re looking for the Colonel and Stiles...” he offered as they rushed down a hallway that Rodney hadn’t seen on the way in. It seemed like they were going the opposite direction of the way up to the surface, but it was admittedly hard to stay focused on memorizing a trail when he was worried about getting growled at again. Impossibly, the pair ahead of him started running then, and there was no chance Rodney would be able to keep up, but he had to try. The alternative was to run into a pack of Genii soldiers, on his own, without weapons, so Rodney was making the conscious choice to trust the werewolves not to eat him. Derek seemed alright, Daniel was the one Rodney wasn’t so sure about. 

The first group of Genii that they came to, the soldiers were surprised, easily overpowered, and Derek’s werewolf claws took men down with the efficiency of Wolverine, who until that point in his life Rodney had thought an entirely fictional concept and was having to reconsider the possibility that the idea had been borrowed. Daniel was messier about it and Rodney tried not to notice the very dead bloody body he ran past. Daniel stayed behind to finish off the Genii soldier who had tried to get in the way of the freight train that was a running werewolf, and Rodney tried to stay on Derek’s heels. 

He ended up a hallway behind, but the nice part was that even if he couldn’t keep up, he could at least tell where the werewolves had gone. Daniel ran by him, thankfully with the presence of mind to recognize that Rodney was one of the good guys, and tracked Derek down the one hallway Rodney had lost him on. 

By the time Rodney got to the corner, Derek had pulled another frame off the wall and the metal doors hung brokenly out into the hall. That was a very big, helpful clue. All the same, Rodney was regretting a few life choices, such as his lack of sleep the night before, and his general aversion to running, as he arrived, panting, at the opened office room. Daniel lurked in the hallway outside of it, still looking like an angry, seething werewolf, and he glared at Rodney with unnaturally bright yellow eyes, so Rodney stayed well back from him as he snuck around the corner into the room. 

It was darker in the room than it was in the hall, lit by candles instead of the bright, overhead flood lights everywhere else. It took a moment to adjust and Rodney saw Derek standing a few feet in front of the door, impatiently waiting for him, and Stiles a few feet away.

“Rodney! Help!” Stiles hissed at him, just barely loud enough for Rodney to hear. He saw the Sentinel wave at the bench against the wall and realized John sat there, with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face, an empty stare aimed at the wall across the room. Rodney moved over to crouch in front of him, not terribly surprised when John continued to ignore his presence. It was another zone out, and John had been under long enough that he was forgetting how to breathe again. 

Stiles buzzed around behind him, with the spyorb aiming it’s little pinprick of a white light all around the wall behind John’s head. It was probably floating around and lit up at the teen’s direction to help make sure Rodney could see. It was distracting, but it worked, so Rodney didn’t send them off.

The kid had been trying to whisper, so Rodney took a wild guess that John had gone under on sound, which only made sense when he was locked up in the dark away from the rest of his team. Rather than try to talk him out of it, Rodney set a hand to John's arm, just above his watch, and the other cradled his neck and jaw.

As the Guide, Rodney was supposed to be the calm one to get Sentinel through these things. Instead, he was still scared of the werewolf at the door and the Genii soldiers yelling that even he could hear echoing along the underground city’s hallways. Fear was unavoidable, even if it was likely to hit John and maybe make things worse. But the fear was why John needed to snap out of it, so if he came back a little pissed off and panicked, it would probably work out in everyone’s favor. Resting his forehead to John’s, Rodney leaned into his space to leverage touch and smell against the Sentinel’s hyperfocus on sound.

A moment later, John seemed to be climbing out of it and he was soon swearing. He caught at Rodney’s arm and stared at him, this time actually seeing him.

“We gotta go,” Rodney said. John nodded and Rodney helped him stand. He didn’t exactly have the best footing but John leaned into him anyway, still getting his bearings. 

“Almost made it a goddamned month,” he heard John say, quiet. There were werewolves, otherwise Rodney would have shared his opinions on the inconvenience of the zone out. Instead he just squeezed John’s shoulder and stepped aside to let him away from the sofa bench. It left Sheppard facing a couple of werewolves at the door for the first time and he let out another swearing fit. 

“ _That’s_ the plan we’re on?” he asked, clearly as annoyed with it as everyone else. 

“It’s working so far,” Rodney pointed out. “So let’s stick with it, right?”

“Yeah,” the Colonel agreed. He shooed Stiles toward Derek and then caught Rodney by the front of the vest to pull him along. “Let’s go. We gotta find our way out of this maze.”

“That’s on you two,” Rodney replied. “Werewolves have the... crowd control. Stay behind Derek.”

“This is gonna be fun.” Sheppard nodded and stuck his head out the door into the hallway, a little too close to Daniel, so Rodney tugged him back and waved Derek out ahead of them. Stiles already seemed to know to keep his distance from the not-small baby-werewolf and crept out along the wall. He waved for the others to follow, so Derek hung back to let Sheppard and Rodney through to catch up with the other teen, acting as a breaker between them and Daniel. 

The Sentinel scouted their way out, heading back the way they had come for part of the trip. They passed by bodies and John had the presence of mind to retrieve weapons from them. He handed Rodney a knife, like there was a chance in hell he actually remembered what to do with the thing as a defensive weapon, and kept a Genii rifle and a handgun. The handgun was passed to Stiles and Rodney was mildly offended but they didn’t exactly have time to discuss it. He settled for backhanding John’s arm in protest.

“You’ll get the _next_ dead guy gun, Rodney,” John hissed over at him, placating with as much sarcasm as he could scrounge up. The man was technically busy trying to scent-out fresh air in dank hallways that probably smelled like werewolves and blood and a great many other things Rodney didn’t want to think about, so he stayed close. 

“Gunfire in these hallways is going to put you both down,” Rodney said, a helpful reminder from the one Guide who could still speak around their canine-teeth. “Shooting should be the last resort to protect your hearing. And dial it down. I mean, _hard_. We’re talking a point-five.”

“Got it,” replied John. He stopped suddenly and pushed Rodney into the wall with a solid shoulder check, turning enough to wave Derek and Daniel ahead and to the left corridor. The werewolves took point then, stalking a few yards. Daniel angled right and then rushed ahead, taking the left hallway with a low and angry growl. Derek followed, making his own level of noise, and Rodney glared at the ceiling; what had he _just_ tried to tell people about sound?

To make it worse, this group of Genii didn’t run. They opened fire, which sent Stiles and John up to try to defend their team. They had seen the Alpha werewolves take bullets that should have killed them and keep fighting, but that didn’t mean they wanted to risk it with _their_ werewolves. Stiles seemed to panic when he got to the corner though; the kid knew how to handle a gun on the range, and probably hunting, but it was different when aiming into a group of uniforms, with two friendlies somewhere in the mix. John managed a shot with the foreign rifle without hesitation and seemed surprised when two men went down from a single trigger-pull. It wasn’t Ronon’s magnum, but it left a hole about as big. 

The werewolves had the rest of the group of Genii either down or scattered. John waved them on and collected another three hand guns - “One for the hand, one for the holster, and I told you you’d get the next one, Rodney,” he said, louder than he intended to because his hearing was actually dialed down. - to help get the group to the exit. Now that he was sufficiently armed, John took point again, and Rodney hung on to his shoulder like they usually did when they found themselves off-world and sneaking their way through a shooting gallery. This time it was to help keep John grounded and the dials where they needed to be as he focused on finding their way out and avoiding more soldiers. The Sentinel had survived the first round against the gunfire noises, so John didn’t hesitate when he found the next batch of Genii.

It took a few minutes but they climbed out to the overlook that led up to the ladder and the old hay shed without having to send werewolves hacking and slashing again. John stopped as they trotted down the stairs, listening to something. He waved for Derek and Daniel to close the big doors that blocked off the underground city, then turned to Stiles. 

“Did you hear that?”

Stiles nodded. “Explosion?”

“Perfect timing.” John was smiling as he hurried to the ladder that was their way out. He sent Stiles up first and then Rodney. The noise John had asked about became much more obvious to Rodney as he climbed up the ladder to help Stiles shove the heavy door back and open. Definitely explosions, somewhere closer in toward the village. Rodney climbed out of the way and stayed back, on the lookout for werewolves and proof of C4 in their immediate area. Stiles leaned on the edge of the hatch, staring back down at where they had come from as he waited for Derek.

"Teyla, Ronon, how's it looking? We clear to get to the Jumper?" John asked over the radios. He showed up topside a moment later. The werewolves followed him up. Daniel looked run ragged, covered in blood and things Rodney didn't want to contemplate.

"The Genii are rather concerned with the treeline behind the barn, Colonel," came Teyla's voice over the earwig. "The path to the stargate should be clear."

"Got about six more stumps to clear," Ronon chimed in, sounding far too happy about removing dead trees for the Genii.

"Well. Set 'em off, let's go!" Sheppard ordered. He started looking around the hatch for some way to hold the door locked down. Then he backed up to the door again and peeked out. "Second thought, I'll take some of what's left. Slow these guys down for a few."

Teyla showed up a moment later and helped rig the shed to blow. Derek by then had calmed down and shifted back so he was just a bloody human rather than a werewolf, but Daniel stayed as he was. When John ordered everyone out and to the stargate, they had been topside for under two minutes and there had already been three more explosions somewhere across the village. 

The C4 blew up the shed over the underground access hatch, managing to bring the heavy support structure of the shed down to bury the whole thing. It wouldn't trap the city but it would slow their soldiers. Then the team ran for the cover of the woods around the village. The two Sentinel kept their hearing turned down, because neither of them noticed when Daniel stopped running with them and took off back toward the village, Derek shouting after him that it was time to go. When Daniel ignored him, Derek took off after him, and _that_ was noticed. Everyone stopped then, trying to figure out what had happened.

"Ronon? Report," Sheppard said into the radio. 

"All good here. On my way," said Ronon.

"So what sent Daniel heading back your way then?" Sheppard wanted to know. Rodney was concerned about that himself; he hadn't heard anything to indicate trouble, had only just barely registered that he had stopped running from the werewolves as it was.

"No idea. I'll catch him, we can meet up with you later," said Ronon.

"Derek, is this a werewolf thing?" Sheppard asked.

"Maybe, yeah, " replied Derek over the radio. "I can't find him."

John swore again before he shook himself out of it. "I'm getting everybody else to the Jumper for cloaks and shields."

"I'll stay with them, make sure they get back through the 'gate," Ronon's voice said. 

"Are you- we just got them _back_!" Rodney complained. Teyla looked between him and John, apparently fine with it. 

"They don't know Ronon here. He will be fine. And he knows how to dial Atlantis," she pointed out. John didn't like it but he nodded.

"Fine. Ronon, get them home. If we don't hear from you in an hour, we'll be back. So check in as soon as Daniel turns up," he ordered. Stiles started to protest but Sheppard caught his shoulder to steer him toward the Jumper. "You and me have to get outta here. Daniel's messed up. If we get bit, nobody's gonna have a good day."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Oh, because it's been a picnic of a day so far."

"That's my _point_ , Rodney," Sheppard ground out. "So let's go, so you can get Stiles out of the cuffs before the Daedalus leaves."

"Wait, what-" Confused and concerned, Rodney took off after them.

~*~*~

Before the Jumper was even through the stargate, Derek radioed to report that he and Ronon had eyes on Daniel. The Guide's plan was to let Daniel burn it out of his system, and it was certainly safer to do that in the thick forested area around the 'gate than to risk sending him back to Atlantis while he refused to shift back. There was something said about having gone too long without shifting, but Sheppard didn't understand how their rules worked. Weir was right; he was really going to have to get good on that stuff. So only _most_ of AR-1 made it back through the 'gate to Atlantis that time, with Ronon and Derek under orders to keep them informed of progress.

John parked the Jumper and felt suddenly exhausted as the safety of home eased back the adrenaline. He was yawning by the time he hit the rear hatch, trying to ignore the warning buzz of a headache. It was probably stress from the day and the zone out on top of it, but John figured he needed to pay attention to the fact that it was there, anyway. He couldn't push it, not when he stepped out of the Jumper bay to hear the way Atlantis had woken up. There were people in the city again, and the AI was noisily demanding John's attention about it.

"I need food," Rodney announced, pulling John's attention immediately.

"Me too," said Stiles. The kid sounded cranky, so John figured the city was hitting him, too. Elizabeth met them at the stairs to the gateroom then. She smiled at seeing Stiles in one piece but frowned as she took a headcount.

"Colonel, you were only short by _two_ when you left," she began. John nodded and tried to motion for her to keep quiet about it.

"Werewolf thing," he said, shortcutting the explanations he didn't have a full grasp on. "Ronon stayed with them to make sure they all get home."

"And what of the Genii?" she asked. Blair and Jim showed up then, too, and it distracted John to realize something was wrong there; he didn't know what or how he knew, but Sandburg was hiding panic. John had to shake his head and tried to focus.

"Cowen knew. They got their hands on a Jumper, that's why they need the gene," he said. 

"Can we retrieve it?" Elizabeth asked.

"It's broken. McKay would have to fix it," said Stiles. The scientist nodded absently and then half turned to narrow his eyes at Stiles.

"That reminds me. You and I need to have a word about volunteering me to fix things in enemy hands," he began. John quieted him with a hand at the back of his neck tugging him a step closer to the Colonel and away from Stiles.

"You can have that word later," he said. "Right now, we need to get food. And the Genii used Daturan tech, so we need to get Stiles out of those cuffs while we still can."

"Wait, the Daturans? They're working with the Genii?" Blair asked, suddenly pale. John looked from Blair to Jim, not sure if he needed to investigate the team's obvious mood or just declare naptime all around, since that was a thing the team was used to now. He was beginning to appreciate the freedom of being ordered on medical leave, though.

"They have some kind of an agreement going, yeah," said John, nodding. "They were going to hand Stiles and Derek over to them for safe keeping while Cowen tried to dodge Elizabeth. That's when our recon objective went sharply south."

"Yes, I noticed as much," Elizabeth said. There would be a full report later so John didn't bother trying to break it down for her any more than that. He realized miserably then that Rodney was going to be at least a week behind on the reports for McMasters, though, and there would be a fight about getting them done sooner rather than later, if at all. The day really did just keep on giving. 

"Look, we need to get moving," he said, reluctant. He winced and found some place to look that was anywhere but at the other Sentinel team or Elizabeth. "I zoned out back there and I already know the follow-up is going to hit and, not to be a broken record, but there's stuff we gotta get done before that happens." 

There was only a nod of acceptance from Blair and a sympathetic grimace from Jim. 

"The city is really chatty," the Sentinel warned. "More people make it harder to hear her, though. That's been interesting this morning."

"Yeah, noticed," said Stiles. The kid scratched at his head, fidgeting. Rodney jerked slightly, like he had been kicked into remembering something important.

"Radiation," he blurted. "They need treatment. Oh god. What's that going to- how long were you underground?"

And suddenly Rodney was steering Stiles toward the infirmary, with no consideration at all for Elizabeth and her questions. He paused long enough to look back at John. "Colonel Sheppard! You, too!"

After that, it was another two hours before the shouting was done. The 'gate dialed in every forty minutes, Ronon reporting that he and Derek had steered Daniel off to the Alpha-site to work the overload of werewolf-everything through his system without the potential problems of dealing with the Genii. All was supposedly going well according to Derek, and Ronon sounded like he was fully entertained keeping up with werewolves, so they wouldn't be checking in again for six hours. 

John had sat through the typical post-Genii decontaminations and had to pop a couple pills that Blair looked wary of. John almost hoped he would have a reaction just for the excuse to go sleep everything off. It turned out that going so long without running into the trouble of the zone out just left him exhausted and headachey when it did finally hit and he was now intensely focused on taking a nap. It didn't help that Rodney had only a couple hours sleep so the team’s morning of excitement left him cranky, too. 

Added to that, Stiles was sour from being on an entirely different planet than his Guide. He was somewhere between the teenager's version of clingy and also ready to sass off at anyone who so much as spoke to him. The kid could be brutal, which John could appreciate better than Elizabeth and Carson, so there were a few reluctant apologies ordered. Teyla finally took him to burn it off in the gym.

McKay backed off his protective paranoia after that. John all but ordered him to nap and Rodney didn't actually argue. They were fed, the team was safe, and the headache buzz had taken full hold of John's senses, so the dials kept slipping. Accidentally admitting that out loud shifted Rodney's focus considerably and he stopped fussing about being too busy to be tired. 

The man stripped out of his shirt to climb into bed with John finally. And that was, admittedly, still new. Maybe it was because John was tired, but it hit him a little bit different to watch Rodney fold his shirt up once and lay it on the edge of the desk before walking toward him. In the month since things had changed, they had mostly shared quarters with the rest of their team, all physical closeness kept chaste and leaning heavily to press the limitations of professional, and now... John was too damn tired and could zone out way too easily if he suggested any of the things he suddenly had in mind. 

Mindful of his senses, John still caught at Rodney's hands to reel him in and then carefully pin him down with a kiss. If he knew where the touches would hit, he could control the overload he knew he was setting himself up for. Rodney smelled clean, only an hour or so from a dozen decontamination showers, and he tasted oddly sweet, and John wanted to get lost in the hunt for all the subtle layers to be experienced.

What he wasn't expecting, however, was for Atlantis to take advantage of his distracted state to hack his brain with a data download. He set his forehead to Rodney's and stayed very still, breathing through the effort to get the city's noise out of his head. 

"John?" came the predictable concern. Rodney started to pull his hands away to touch him and John opened his eyes quickly to show he hadn't zoned.

"Hang on. City-" John managed, but it wasn't much. Rodney cheated then, looped a leg around John's and turned their hands down to help lever them into rolling over. It let him kneel over John without so much touching, which was probably smarter but the opposite of what John wanted, damnit. Still, it was smarter. John reluctantly pried his hand loose and reached for the earpiece to help organize the city's insistent intrusion. Rodney straddled his hips and settled in to wait, watching, curious, with their hands resting on his thighs, and John just felt more frustrated. 

“We have got to figure this out,” Rodney said, thankfully quiet. John nodded absently, eyes scrunched closed as he tried to sort out the jumble of images and words and symbols bouncing around in his head. The connection to the earpiece helped a little but he was still having to mentally move things around like mixed up puzzle pieces on a white board. He remembered the interface from the spyorb and how it had worked the same way as interacting with the dials, so he tried setting his own rules for Atlantis’ attempts at interacting, showing the connection something like a tablet desktop and moving matched puzzle pieces into folders. Creating file-trees was something the Atlantis Database was terrible at, and if this worked Rodney would hate him, but John had to try something. 

The weird telepathic AI seemed to catch on and John was able to relax the almost white knuckled grip he had on Rodney’s hands. More things popped up and John tried to organize them, teaching the damn system how to be a computer he understood. But if the human mind could handle over four thousand simultaneous impressions at once, like Rodney had rambled at him a week ago, the Atlantis computer was still working at ten to a hundred times that and John missed most everything shoved at him. 

The nice part about the AI though - the terrifying part about it - was that it learned. The missed information meant it could learn that it was going too fast and the city gradually slowed down. That was a huge success, but John was still tired, and training a computer how to talk to him was nowhere near what he wanted to be doing. The frustration notched up. 

All of this happened in hardly a couple of minutes, John’s only indication of the actual passage of time being Rodney’s tolerance for his stubborn refusal to engage with the world outside his own head. Atlantis hit him with sound suddenly, a new level of the information download, and John cringed up toward Rodney, belatedly holding their hands over his ears as a buffer.

“What the hell-” Rodney began.

“Tell me you heard that!” John asked, barely not shouting after the unexpected assault on senses he hadn’t thought to check the dials on.

“Was that... seriously?” Rodney sounded bewildered. It figured _he_ was curious even as John suddenly thought his ears were going to split his skull. The man lowered his voice then, apparently catching on from the glare John shot at him. “Was that a whale song?”

“There was no song in that,” John replied, bitter. But his ears calmed down. They both heard the sound again. “I swear she’s trying to kill me, Mer. What the hell?”

"The - Atlantis isn't trying to kill you. She tried to kill everyone who _wasn't you_ while we were gone," Rodney pointed out, but he was still looking around for the source of the noise. "That _was_ real, right? We actually heard actual sounds? Or is this another shared delusion... Crap. I'm _tired_ , John. We've been back for a week and I haven't had more than two hours sleep in a real bed the whole time... We could just have both snapped, I'm not saying it's not a possibility..."

He wasn’t wrong. The sounds hadn’t been normal sounds at all and John honestly thought he was losing it for having heard them in the first place. Somehow they had been in his head, but he had very definitely heard them in the room around him, too. It hurt and it made no damn sense at all. _Screw that_.

John gave up then, let go of his hands to instead pull Rodney down to him. The man could do what he wanted with his hands. If they were going to go out crazy, he was at least going out on his own terms. 

~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _______________________________________________  
> TW: Canon-typical violence for werewolves  
> _______________________________________________


	17. Chapter 17

There was no easing into the job on Atlantis. They had to hit the ground running or it was likely to hit them. Blair had been down the main passageway out to the piers and back, their apartment was even located a bit further away from the central tower with a great view of the full city, but that still left a lot of unknown territory. They were going to have to figure it out as they went rather than get the tour any more than they already had; there was just too much to do, too much to stay on top of. So when Dr. Weir called a meeting in the conference room, first thing in the morning, Blair had absolutely no idea where to go.

Jim radioed Sheppard about it and they set up to meet and get the escort, but it apparently wasn't far from places they did know. When they met up on the way, John was back in the shades, despite getting the night off and promising to actually sleep. He had said he had zoned on the other planet, so maybe he had gone under hard, like when he first came online. If he wasn't used to it, and he wasn't careful about the whole needing to breathe part, it could be a shock to the system all over again. 

Blair didn't want to, but he was going to have to work with the guys on controlling zone outs. It meant practicing them, and he already knew Sheppard and McKay's opinions on exposure therapy. It was a fight Blair didn't want to pick until things were calmer, but maybe he wasn't going to get the option. He had already put it off too long. They would work on it when Derek got back. 

They retrieved Stiles and Teyla on the way. The city had kept Jim awake half the night with whatever static it created, and it had apparently done the same to Stiles. But with Derek gone, the guy had to fight through it on his own. He stayed with Teyla, and walked out of her apartment smelling enough like candles and incense that even Blair could pick up on it. He looked to Jim and John right away, surprised that a Sentinel could handle it, but neither of them showed any reaction. Blair tugged at Jim's sleeve, mouth open to ask, and Jim just shrugged. 

"It's Teyla, Chief. We're already used to it," he said. 

"Used to what?" Teyla asked.

"The incense from your apartment," Blair said, motioning back toward the door as they walked away. "I would have expected their senses to react to it."

"Ah, yes," the woman said, offering a clever smile. "It would seem I should take the time to instruct _you_ on a few things, Dr. Sandburg. There are as many new plants here that are... Sentinel-friendly as there are scents and greenlife that should be kept away at all costs. When the botany lab is back up, I can show you some of them."

"Can I pass on that field trip?" Rodney asked. "My allergies..."

"And ex-girlfriends," added John, quieter, but still enough to get him elbowed in the stomach for the taunt. 

"The botany labs aggravate my allergies," Rodney said, just to make himself clearly understood.

"Got it. And with the way you two work, if they aggravate your allergies, John won't be any better," Blair pointed out. That sobered John's smug grin and he returned the bitter elbow dig he had just gotten from Rodney.

"Thanks for that, McKay," he muttered.

"Fairly certain _none_ of this is my fault," replied Rodney. 

"Debatable," returned John.

"Oh my god," said Stiles. "Okay! No Sentinel in botany, moving on!"

The teenager was obviously not in his usual cheerful mood if he couldn't tolerate the Colonels being, well, themselves. There was quiet for a moment as they walked onward. Then John coughed, casual enough.

"Derek checked in an hour ago, by the way. They're fine, they'll be back this morning," he said, as an apparent peace offering. That was a relief to Blair, though Stiles still looked slightly murderous about the whole thing. He stuck close to Teyla as she and Sheppard led the way. McKay trailed behind, his attention mostly on his tablet, as usual. 

“Ellison,” Rodney began, not bothering to look up from the screen. Blair peeked over at it and wasn’t shooed away for the crime, but he saw a screen full of words in Ancient that would have taken him a lot more focus than he could muster while reading over someone’s shoulder. “Can you hear the whales here?”

Blair glanced at Jim, mouth open to reply for him, but he hesitated. The both of them had heard something like a whale the night before, but it hadn’t made sense. They had dismissed it as crazy and he didn’t want to out them both as nutjobs, in light of the last week. Jim seemed to have the same concerns.

“There are whales here?” Jim asked, careful with the question.

“Well, yes. There’s an ocean, right there,” Rodney waved in the general direction of the nearest window. “It has things that live in it. Big whales. Smaller fish they eat. The planet sustains life, Captain. Atlantis has whales.”

That was a bit of a relief. Jim nodded. “Blair and I heard something that sounded like a whale song last night.”

“Really?” Rodney stopped walking to stare back at them. “Both of you?”

“We did, as well,” offered Teyla. The group came to a stop then outside what seemed to be a wall, and Sheppard appeared somehow in a better mood than he had been earlier. 

“Well, nice to know we’re not crazy,” he said. He waved a hand over the trio of crystals on the wall and the wall panels in front of the group turned on a center axis to open, revealing a conference room. Blair looked around and quickly realized where they were, not far from Operations, and swore to get himself maps. It was a city, an actual _city_ , with hundreds of buildings and thousands of rooms, and even if the expedition didn't use all of them, he should at least get an idea of those that were occupied and what connected to where. It was just a really big university campus.

"Captain, Colonel," Major Lorne greeted as he walked into the room. He nodded to Teyla and the others, with a "Docs." for Blair and Rodney.

"Good morning, Major," added Teyla, returning the man's usual bright smile. Stiles stopped scowling for a moment and nodded before he slouched into a chair. Lorne kept his distance from the teenaged stormcloud and dropped into a chair at the other end of the circled-up desks. Teyla and Sheppard boxed Stiles in to keep him on the straight and narrow for the meeting's duration and Blair grabbed a chair next to Rodney.

Elizabeth Weir walked in shortly after and with her came Colonel Caldwell. Blair noticed Sheppard sit up a little from his casual lean into Rodney's space and take the sunglasses off his face. Jim raised an eyebrow at Blair as the Atlantis-based Sentinel team seemed to straighten up and come back from their mandatory medical leave suddenly. Rodney even stopped looking at the database on the tablet. The Director waved a hand in front of a crystal set before she approached the table and Blair watched the wall of doors swivel closed again behind Caldwell. 

"Good morning Teyla," Elizabeth said as she sat down, adding "Gentlemen."

The greetings seemed subdued then as Elizabeth dove right in. She folded her hands over her tablet in front of her and looked to Colonel Sheppard.

"To get right to the matter of concern, I went over your briefing of yesterday's events with Colonel Caldwell. I say this because, despite the adventure off world, you are still on medical leave. And I do believe that should remain in place if your care team advises it. This meeting is not intended to disrupt that or change things in Atlantis operations at all. But your team's experience and knowledge is needed now, and we don't apparently have the luxury of waiting," she said.

John leaned forward, his good mood faded a little further as he set his elbows on the table edge and focused on the Atlantis director. Blair had a good idea suddenly what the meeting had been called for and sunk a little in his chair, maybe a little intentionally trying to angle so that Rodney blocked the Colonel's noticing him. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, Blair wished he had grabbed a seat not next to Rodney, either.

"What's this about then?" Sheppard asked. 

"Dr. Sandburg went through a section of the database while you were gone and stumbled across information that I think comes into play with our interactions with the Genii going forward," Elizabeth began. She looked to Caldwell with a nod. "And when I ran it by Colonel Caldwell, he agreed. In light of the Genii having some form of alliance with Datura, we need to rethink how we handle them."

John shook his head. "Cowen's in over his head with them. I talked to him about it. Maybe in a week or so, we should check in and talk with him about it again, give things time to settle down. But they're only invested in the Genii because of those damn posters they put out. Cowen screwed up with them, and he's gonna have that figured out before too long, so I think we can salvage something there."

Elizabeth nodded acceptance of his suggestion but it wasn't the heart of the problem in front of them. "That may be, but there's information missing from your assessments, John. Namely, that the people of Datura are directly descended from the Atlanteans. It started out one of the earliest outposts and broke off from the city only a hundred years before the war began. And from what Blair found in the database? They may be the people who created the Wraith."

"Excuse me?" Rodney nearly fell out of his chair.

"The Wraith were not created," Teyla said, very cautious and sober on the subject. "They are their own people."

"Certainly, they became their own people," Elizabeth said. She waved a hand carefully to indicate John. "But as we have seen multiple times now with the Colonel, they started out human. The Wraith developed from human and Irratus DNA interaction, likely with some help from more advanced species. From the looks of it, they evolved, in whole or in part, from the experiments done on Datura, and maybe other places as well. Just as generations later, the Wraith went on to do their own experiments on your people. It's what they were taught."

There was a heavy silence as Teyla, John, and Rodney processed the news. Stiles seemed to have forgotten his bad mood for the morning and had leaned forward to watch everyone; Blair could see easily that the boy's senses were up too high from the sudden change in the air. Half their team's mood had just tanked and Blair could imagine the adrenaline spike was assaulting the Sentinels' senses. Some days he was really glad he got the Guide gig and not the alternative.

"We were around these guys for weeks," John finally said, shaking his head. "We saw no signs of the Wraith. Not once."

Rodney nodded. "It was weird. Everyone knew about them. They heard stories, other people's accounts, but it wasn't the problem there. The other _humans_ were the problem."

"It was a goddamned prison planet," John added. "Everyone was trapped and easy picking. It should have been primed for culling and we never saw a Dart. Not one."

"Same here," Lorne said, backing up the Colonel. "My team was on Datura, not the other one, and we never saw signs of the Wraith. It was more like being back on Earth than anything."

"Civilizations evolve separately," Blair offered. "Even one that was already well established, like the database said Datura was. It would be no different than a colony that declares independence. Their technological evolution follows that, and the similarities depend on, you know, communication between their cultures being maintained. These people made a choice their homeland didn't approve of and, rather than shut it down, they broke all ties.” 

“So their tech would have suffered for it," said Rodney. “That’s why they are still only as far along as us. Or seemed like it, anyway.”

"And it would seem, a hundred years or so after their bad breakup, the Daturans sent that _choice_ back to fight their wars for them," said Caldwell. 

"They made them as soldiers?" Rodney asked, surprised. Elizabeth shook her head.

"No, it started out with the longevity of the irratus, from what I read. Perceived immortality. And durability. And health. The notes we originally found on the planet itself noted the Daturans as healers. It was only partly because of their access to herbal remedies," she said. 

"By the time Atlantis broke off from Datura, they had the Wraith working the mines because they had the strength to do it," Blair pointed out. Sheppard swore and shoved back from the table. Rodney stared at Blair, eyes quite wide and his entire expression one of disbelief. Blair tapped the forgotten tablet in front of him on the tablet. "I swear, it's in the database."

"But it wasn't in the files associated with the ‘gate address, that's why we didn't find it when you first went through the stargate to investigate," Elizabeth added. 

"God, how can people so damn smart not understand how to program a goddamned file tree," John complained. Rodney nodded his agreement but he was already back to the tablet to look the information up for himself.

"So therein lies our trouble, people," Elizabeth said, taking a deep breath. "Any potential alliance between the Daturans and the Genii is a potential alliance between the Genii and the Wraith. We don't know their current status with their ancestors' creations, but it is a gamble I am not willing to make lightly."

Teyla shook her head. "The Genii will not enter any agreement with the Wraith. They have fought, for _generations_ , against the Wraith. It is all many of our people know here. I am confident in saying that Chief Cowen especially would not."

"Would they, if they were offered the opportunity to be able to end that fight?" Caldwell asked. "Because they're half a step away from it, potentially, if the Daturans have kept these people on as pets on a leash all this time. We don't know how the Wraith pick their planets to attack; it could just as easily be an old enemies list that the Daturans add and scratch off names from."

Teyla frowned, seemed to want to argue, but she shook her head. "I do not know what the Genii would do then, no."

"That's why this is a problem," said Caldwell. "We have no way of knowing what they would do. And based on the interactions we have already had with these people, we don't know for sure what kind of a relationship the Daturans have with the Wraith. Other than they leave them alone, which is a luxury they don't seem to afford many other populations of this galaxy. Which lends a lot of credibility to what Sandburg found in the database."

"Precisely," agreed Elizabeth. She looked to John. "And I think it's just one more reason to abandon our efforts at alliance with the Genii."

John was already shaking his head. "Nope."

"Wait, what?" Stiles asked, because suddenly he had a known stake in the politics being discussed around him. Rodney, too, leaned on the table to stare at John.

"How do you figure?" Caldwell asked.

"I figure my enemy's enemy is my friend, and the Genii may be shit, but they're technologically advanced pieces of shit, so we can't let them start aiming it at us," John replied. He motioned vaguely toward the tablet. "So we tell them what we know and we remind them they want us as friends."

"We can't show our faces on at least six planets, Boss," Lorne offered up. "And you nearly lost a couple guys yesterday. That's all on them for being _real bad_ friends."

"I know that." John nodded his acknowledgement of that sticky situation but he still stabbed a finger at the desk, stuck to his original answer as he looked over at Caldwell and Weir. "Fact is, we've needed the Genii before. And we don't know what we're up against on this problem with the Daturans. We know that the Genii can't be trusted, but now we know their game. If they're gonna use the stargate against us, we can fix that problem. And I'm thinking maybe we should demonstrate that. See if it repairs this perception Cowen's got that we're not capable of defending ourselves against these petty bullshit bounty games."

Elizabeth didn't seem sold but she seemed to be listening. "How do you mean?"

"I mean the 'gate. Say we relocate the 'gate. Say, fifty miles _somewhere else_ of where the Gate Builders put it. Make Cowen get his ass on a horse next time he wants to hop to another planet to cause trouble."

Blair gaped, looking from John to Rodney. "We can relocate a stargate?"

Rodney shrugged and nodded. "Pretty easily, with the Daedalus."

"If we're going to prove we can relocate it, why not remove it entirely?" Caldwell asked. Dr. Weir was considering the idea and shook her head at the Colonel's suggestion.

"The Genii have multiple outposts on other planets. We don't know their full reach. But to cut those countries off may have a ripple effect we don't need right now," said Elizabeth. 

"All we gotta do is show we can do it and reframe the terms on our alliance. And if the Daturans are going to come back at them for the soldiers who didn't come home, we might have the leverage to work it," John added. "Now, I'm not saying let's have them over for beers next week. But we should try to keep them in our back pocket for the next time we run outta nukes."

"And after the damage the team did yesterday, the Genii will be rethinking a few things anyway," Rodney added. Blair not-so-accidentally kicked the man's heel as he swiveled in his chair, worried suddenly that he had forgotten Daniel's werewolf-related activities were supposed to be classified. He apparently got it from both sides because John reached over and took his tablet to derail him, and Rodney not-so subtly glared at the both of them. It definitely caught Caldwell's attention.

"Wait... What damage?" he asked. 

"Uh, well, we… kinda set Ronon and Teyla loose on the village with some C4," said John, attention very determinedly on the tablet he had stolen. "Buried the entrance to their bunker under a house."

" _And_ the barn with the disabled Jumper," Teyla added. John looked up at her, surprised.

"Really?" he asked. At her nod, he brightened. "Nice. Very nice."

"It's not the Jumper's fault," Stiles pointed out. John shrugged at that.

"The Jumper can survive some C4," he said. The topic of werewolves was successfully dodged and Blair slouched back in his chair. Sheppard set the tablet down then and returned his attention to Caldwell. "Anyway. That's my suggestion for how we handle this. And we obviously would need the Daedalus' assistance for it."

"Obviously," agreed Caldwell. He glanced to Dr. Weir for her opinion.

"It seems reasonable to me. I don't trust Cowen, but surely we can't hold an entire culture responsible for his tactics," she said. John raised a finger to point at her words.

"Exactly my thinking," he said. "Cowen won't be around forever."

"And if it doesn't work, we take the 'gate _next_ time," said Rodney. John clapped him on the shoulder for it, approving of the spirit. All eyes turned to Caldwell as the final vote on it and the man gave a nod.

"I'll talk to Hermiod about _adjusting_ the coordinates of the Genea stargate then," he said. "What about the Daturan problem?"

"The Genii are going to be the canary in that particular coal mine," Sheppard replied. "The Daturans sent Cowen six men who didn't make it home. We'll have to see how they handle it with the Chief. If he sends them our way or not. If we're in the clear, in a few weeks, we can check in on the alliance Lorne set up, see what we can find out."

There was a chirp in their radios then. "Dr. Weir, incoming wormhole. It's Ronon's IDC."

Stiles was out of his chair like a shot and tripped on it when it occurred to him that he had been present for an actual meeting, among adults, and that he would possibly be expected to behave like one. He hovered awkwardly at Sheppard's chair, not sure who to ask permission to leave from, or how. Apparently Atlantis made the decisions, likely with a little help from the Sentinel, because the doors slid open without anyone going near the tri-crystal panel. Elizabeth seemed surprised but amused by the teenager's dilema and looked around the table.

"If it's agreeable to everyone, we'll call this settled for now and await updates from Colonel Caldwell on his end," she said. 

"Agreed," said John, as he edged his chair back to be ready to leave. Everyone else nodded and the meeting was declared adjourned. Stiles ran from the room, despite Sheppard calling for him to wait up. Teyla and the Lt. Colonel ended up running after him. Everyone else broke up at a much calmer pace, with Caldwell wishing the adults in the room good luck before he lit up and then, at the push of a button on a wand in his hand, disappeared back up to the Daedalus. Blair blinked at the empty chair left behind and the realization it had suddenly triggered for him.

"Holy crap," he blurted. "We've only been here a week. _We_ were just on the Daedalus..."

"Not quite, but yes," said Elizabeth. "It's definitely been a busy few days."

"No kidding," said Jim, shaking his head. _Busy_ didn't seem to cover it. Worse, Blair had the distinct impression that their busy few days had been mild in comparison to the norm. He grumbled out an "Oh god…" and Jim patted him on the shoulder. 

"Just putting it out there, but this was not my idea," he said with his usual sarcastic cheer. Rodney quickly held his hands up, tablet and all, and shook his head.

"Don't look at me! This - none of this - is my fault," he said.

"Well, I'm sure you can take credit for some of it," Elizabeth replied, grinning at her friend as they headed for the gateroom. Rodney recognized the teasing for what it was and harrumphed at her for it.

When they arrived at the gateroom, they found Stiles impatiently waiting at the sidelines because John wouldn't let him any closer, and Teyla stood by, smiling as the two argued about the wisdom of crowding an active stargate even when they were expecting friendlies. Elizabeth went up to Ops and Major Lorne went up to assist the Colonel while the rest of them tried to stay out of the way.

A minute later, Ronon walked through the stargate, accompanied by an overly large black wolf and an overly large tan and white mottled wolf. Blair's eyes bugged as he realized the other wolf was Daniel Jackson. 

Ronon was smiling and smug, looking not much worse for wear, considering he had spent some twenty-odd hours babysitting werewolves. A few scratches on his arms again but none of the problems that John and Jim had from werewolf-inflicted injuries. Teyla walked out to greet the Sentinel with a calm hug that quickly turned into a laughing sweep off her feet for a kiss. Blair politely turned his attention to others. 

By then, Stiles had attacked the black wolf in a full-body tackle and didn't seem to mind that his Guide was not currently human-shaped. He got in a hug and rough-housing and kept burying his face in the wolf's side. He could apparently still find the familiar pattern of his Guide somehow even when the man's body had entirely transformed into undoubtedly different smells and sounds. The teen’s bad mood seemed to have disappeared.

The tan and white wolf stayed clear of the reunions and Blair went with John to cautiously check him out. The ocher coloring had the patterns and sharp coloration lines of a larger gray wolf, complete with well defined circles around the eyes, giving the impression that the wolf was wearing glasses.

"Daniel?" John asked, quiet, catching the wolf's attention. The tawny tail swept across the floor as Daniel sat down in front of the stairs. John sat himself down on the steps rather than stare down at the wolf. There was no attack, no jump and snap, or other naturally-occurring canine behavior, lending further evidence that they were dealing with another werewolf. Blair kept back to avoid crowding but he crouched near his friends. John reached forward and poked a finger at the wolf’s shoulder, trying to provoke him, and Daniel curled a lip to show teeth but didn’t snap. John nodded approvingly and draped his arms over his knees.

"Well, good work,” the Colonel said. He paused and then waved at the ‘gate. “The shifting thing, I mean. I'm still pissed off about the trick on Genea. But good with the wolf thing."

The wolf huffed at him for it. But the tail thumped a few more times. Blair looked over at Jim, who still lurked on the sidelines with Rodney and Lorne, none of them looking at all willing to engage with the wolves. The wormhole closed then. Major Lorne looked suddenly very confused. He kept his distance from the wolves but started up toward Ops like something was wrong. John caught him on it at the stairs to ask what happened. Lorne paused and motioned toward the stargate.

"Jackson and Hale, sir. Their call this morning said all three would be coming through. Two didn't make it," the Major said. John looked over at Blair and then down at the wolves and back.

"Crap."

~*~*~

The werewolf thing still messed with Jim's head. He could keep up with the energy guides. He was used to seeing or hearing small proofs of the jaguar over the years. Blair's wolf had shown up a few times when Sandberg was called out of town to Alexandria, especially when they were just getting that campus set up and everything was still new. Everything was new all over again and the jaguar had made himself known a few times. But he wasn't just _seeing things_ with werewolves. Somehow Derek Hale and Daniel Jackson existed as human and wolf in the same body and that… was weird.

Major Evan Lorne thought the same thing, and he said as much, when Sheppard tried to quietly brief him on the confidential werewolf problem that applied to Daniel. John pointed to the two still-healing stripes on his face and shoved the sleeve of his shirt up to show the Major the proof of the last attack.

"Weird or whatever, you don't argue with the bad ones," Sheppard told the soldier. Lorne got the point then. He pointed off toward where Stiles had disappeared with the two wolves.

"They did that?"

"No. The guys that did that are the ones that bit Jackson. He healed up, but it still took over his system," said John. "The ATA rejected it otherwise I'd be in the same situation. And O'Neill doesn't want the guy getting back to the SGC and treated like an alien combatant. He's a member of SG-1. They need him back. So we get him for a few months so he can get this stuff figured out."

"Just to be clear," Rodney interrupted, "The ATA rejected the werewolf bite and the Colonel died on us. Multiple times. And it's safe to assume that _you_ would have the same reaction because of the gene. So absolutely do not, under any circumstances, get involved when you see… fangs."

Lorne blinked at them, the Major processing the warning. He finally nodded. "If it's a threat to the ATA carriers, we should read in a few people-"

"Classified," John reminded him. "Daniel can handle this. When we gotta worry about it, Derek or Stiles will let us know. And in the meantime, when Jackson goes off world, I want you watching the 'gate so we don't have to have this conversation with every member of Ops. The General wants it quiet, it stays quiet."

Apparently remembering the part where Sheppard was off duty, Lorne looked to Jim. "Sir?"

Sheppard rolled his eyes and backed off a half step, at a loose attention as chain of command was invoked. Rodney awkwardly mirrored him as a geekish " _Not it_."

Jim nodded to the Major. "We'll play it quiet for now, as he said. These two aren't a threat to our team. We won't have everyone in the city treat them as one."

"Understood," said Lorne. Since Jim had the Lt. Colonel's reluctant attention, Blair stepped in and pointed him back toward his team.

"Go track them down, make sure Daniel gets to Carson to get checked out," Sandburg said, and it was an order. Rodney started to complain but he stopped when Sheppard turned and left. The scientist grumbled about having things to do that _weren't_ checking up on Dr. Jackson but he still followed after the Sentinel. Apparently McKay was better with the whole werewolf thing than Jim was. 

Ronon and Teyla showed up again then, having been quickly cleared by Carson, with only one cut requiring a patch job. He looked over his shoulder at the hall Sheppard and McKay had disappeared down. "Where're they going?"

"I sent them to check on Daniel," said Blair. He motioned toward the bandage. "What happened with them, man? You were just supposed to babysit, not _fight_."

Ronon flashed him a dark grin. "You're not my boss."

Blair rolled his eyes. "It's not like John told you to come back looking like a scratching post."

Ronon shrugged. "I'm gonna go report to _Elizabeth_."

Teyla sighed, the woman looking after Ronon in exasperation as he cut through the group to the stairs. Jim raised an eyebrow and looked to the man's Guide. She shook her head.

"He's fine," she assured them. "He's just… him."

Jim accepted that with a shrug and then gently shoved Blair toward the stairs. "Sheppard's busy," he reminded his Guide. Blair nodded and trotted up the steps after Ronon.

"Right. One of us has gotta be up on the team reports," Sandburg reasoned. And he went to snoop on the werewolf report. Jim took his time following after, in no hurry to hear about it. There was a sudden alert then and he ducked instinctively at the sound from the Gateroom behind him as the stargate started lighting up.

"Unscheduled gate activation!" called the guy who handled the controls on the stargate, Chuck or something like that. Jim hurried up the steps as Lorne turned and moved down to get a better vantage point. Teyla caught Jim's arm to pull him toward Ops and Elizabeth Weir. The Director was just crossing the bridge to stand behind Chuck and look over the computer controls. Ronon ducked by them to go watch the stairs, on alert and his earlier humor faded.

"What's coming through?" Elizabeth asked. Chuck shook his head.

"Nothing yet. Iris is engaged," the man reported. Elizabeth nodded and moved aside to get a better look at the stargate. Blair appeared at Jim's shoulder. He looked fine but the man's anxiety had spiked hard. Jim frowned at him and shifted slightly to keep himself between his Guide and the 'gate.

"VHF frequency, Director," said Chuck. He looked between his laptop and the stargate. "From the data pattern, I'm gonna guess it's Genii."

Elizabeth stepped back around the consoles and motioned toward the screen at the back of the room. "Well. Let's find out who it is then. Audio only."

A moment later there was a grainy, scrolling image on the screen. It was definitely the Genii, since Jim recognized the man in the uniform just off-center in front of the camera. He squinted at the camera and then tapped at something somewhere below it. Elizabeth Weir smiled darkly at the screen and patted Chuck on the shoulder, told him to send them live. A moment later, Cowen stopped fussing with things beside the camera and seemed satisfied with whatever he saw on his end.

“Director Weir,” the man said, obviously an angry man. Jim unconsciously stepped closer to the Director, just as an intimidating presence to back her up. Elizabeth folded her arms as she considered the live feed.

“Chief Cowen. I wish I could thank you for returning our men to us,” she replied.

“Your men killed five of mine and another six aside,” the Genii Chief returned. “I demand their return for trial.”

“Seems like maybe you should be glad it was only eleven men and think twice before you try a stunt like that again,” cut in Jim, annoyed at the man’s sheer gall to make that demand. Elizabeth glanced up at him, her lips tugged up on one side but the politician’s mask still in place. Cowen scowled at him over the feed.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What happened to Sheppard?”

“Colonel Sheppard is fine, he has the day off,” replied Elizabeth. After the bounties had made the rounds, neither of them felt like offering up Ellison’s name to the Genii. Cowen didn’t seem to care.

“Good, then it won’t be any trouble to send him back-”

“We won’t be sending anyone back,” said Elizabeth. “And in light of your bounty on my men, we’ll need to take a good hard look at our agreement.”

Cowen scoffed at that. “What agreement? You sent us monsters and killed my men. Our alliance is absolved.”

“I’m sorry to hear you feel that way, Chief. I was under the impression you had just cut ties with the Daturans under similarly unpleasant circumstances. It creates the impression that you are more invested in collecting enemies than maintaining friendships,” the Director replied, guileless and politely saddened by the unsurprising news. “I would like to remind you that Atlantis has honored our obligations to our alliance-”

“My halls were transformed into a bloodbath,” said Cowen. “Your men attacked!”

“That’s a curious suggestion, considering when I asked you as to the whereabouts of my missing team, you assured me that they weren’t there. So how can they have committed these crimes when, per your word, they weren’t there?” said Elizabeth. “Unless, of course, you lied. In which case, my men had every right to defend themselves under threat while they attempted to get home.”

Cowen didn’t have anything to say to that. Jim scoffed and shook his head; the man was a coward. 

“What were they? The men you sent. We’ve never seen the like of such monsters,” Cowen said instead. 

“We didn’t send anyone, you took them,” Jim pointed out. “They’re members of my team. So consider that before you snatch people off the streets, because you sure as hell don’t know what you’re going to get for it. It’s a mixed bag out here. You might get bit, grabbing things that don’t belong to you.”

“Our alliance has been beneficial to both of our people. In light of the- let’s call them lessons learned, on both sides... we are willing to put this incident behind us to maintain our agreement. But I would like your assurance that this won’t happen again, Chief Cowen. And that you’ll revoke the bounty your people put on my teams,” said Elizabeth.

“And I think, with eleven men down, that’s worth considering,” Jim added. He looked to Elizabeth, an overabundance of helpfulness. “We were only missing, what, two men? I like our odds.”

They had both already heard the reports from the day before, but the only way for Cowen to call their bluff would be to roll over on his own. A little fun at his expense didn’t hurt. Elizabeth returned his smile for a moment and he thought she was going to laugh but she kept it together and looked back to the screen and Cowen, nodding. “As do I. So I would like to suggest you think this over for a few days, Chief. If it’s agreeable, wonderful. If not, we’ll have to make other arrangements. I can’t have you using the stargate against us.”

"Even if you assume we had taken action against Atlantis, I don't see how you could presume to prevent our use of our stargate," Cowen replied. "And I remind you, we know exactly how to use it to locate your city. You cannot intimidate the Genii from using our technology as we will."

"Hmm… well, keep an eye on your gate activity then, Chief Cowen. You seem to be having trouble with it of late," the Director said, with mild sympathy. The sarcasm faded quickly to something more somber and decisive. "And without assurance that your hostilities against my people will stop, without some show of genuine good faith on your part to preserve our alliance, I assure you that you will _lose_ your stargate. If you intend to continue, no amount of tava is worth the trouble you have already caused us."

"Excuse me? Lose my stargate?" Cowen seemed to find the suggestion laughable. Elizabeth smiled back, but she wasn't laughing.

"There's a reason my people have access to this city and yours do not," she reminded the man. "If you continue to harass us, I will remove your stargate. You will be stranded apart from your colonies. Until you figure out how to use that ship you recovered, of course, but I've been told that will take quite some time without access to my people and our hospitality."

Cowen looked at her, considering the severity of the threat. "How?"

"I have much larger ships at my disposal than you can imagine. So, no, Chief Cowen, you will not be seeing any of my men stand trial for defending themselves, and you are under warning to cease this… _childish_ , offensive testing against Atlantis, or we will put an end to it. Is that clear?" Elizabeth asked. Her patience was fading and she placed a hand on Chuck's shoulder as a signal. Jim raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms, reading what he could off the VHF signal from the grainy screen image.

"Oh, you have made your position clear enough, Director," Cowen said. He was a stubborn ass and a good enough liar, but Elizabeth had spooked him.

"Wonderful," said Dr. Weir, offering a shade of a cheerful smile. "Then we'll check in with you again in a few days. Goodbye, Cowen."

And the video feed cut off then. The stargate remained open, but Chuck made it clear that all communication signals had been shut down. Elizabeth thanked the tech and moved to lean against one of the consoles next to Blair, arms and ankles crossed as she tried to physically force herself to relax. Blair looked between her and Jim.

"Well?" he asked Jim. "How'd it go over?"

Jim nodded toward the screen that was back on the jumble of scrolling Ancient information. "He was nervous when you ended the call. Went out swearing to a much different tune than he started on."

"Good!" said Elizabeth. "We'll see what kind of traction that gets us. I don't want to take their stargate, but that man…"

She broke off, shaking her head, and left it on a sigh. The stargate shut down then. Major Lorne hurried up to Ops, the question on his face before he could ask it. The Director nodded toward the screen. 

“It was a call from Cowen,” she explained.

“Oh good,” replied the Major. “Did you tell him about the Wraith?”

Elizabeth tsked. “Knew I was forgetting to mention _something_ ,” she said, but the sarcasm was evident. At Lorne’s confused eyebrow lift, she added, “He wasn’t exactly in a mood to listen. We’ll see if it comes up next time we chat.”

“The guys really did give him enough to deal with yesterday, from the sounds of it,” Blair said. 

“Right,” said Lorne, his own brand of mellow sarcasm coming out. “Because of the _C4_ , I’m sure.”

Elizabeth nodded, smiling at the Major. “Precisely.”

~*~*~


	18. Chapter 18

After the last few months of each other’s uninterrupted company, the day spent on another planet without Stiles was almost a vacation - for a few hours. Derek was worried about things that weren’t his friend, but were still familiar, and he was able to tap into the wolf at his core. It wasn’t like being around family, exactly, but it was at least somewhere safe, to live with a side of himself he didn’t get to interact with very often, without looming threats. Yes, there was someone around who wasn’t a wolf, but Ronon wasn’t a hunter determined to stop him from it, he was someone helping him use the time. 

Daniel was the most stressful part, just making sure the man didn’t attack a friendly. The new werewolf did lose track of himself for a little while, attacked Ronon twice while Derek wasn’t there to run interference, but the conscious attack wasn’t a bite. Ronon said he was fine with it, and, better than that, he acted fine with it. He still protected Daniel from places somebody out of their mind shouldn’t play, like cliffs and civilization. _Alien_ civilization.

And in the end, Daniel calmed down, came back to himself, and let Derek coach him into the next shift phase. That had been an experiment, just a gut-curiosity like Derek sometimes got on the Sentinel thing, and he tried it. Daniel had spent years doing research on cultures that elevated meditation to an art form, he always seemed to have a solid handle on his own emotional state, if Derek’s sense of smell could be trusted anyway. There was more self-control required for the full-shift and Daniel had shown a lot of it even in the beta-shift. It wasn’t a great surprise that he pulled off the full-shift after a few tries. It had taken Derek months to learn, but he apparently had it figured out well enough to pass it along to someone else.

After that, everything seemed to calm down and Derek could relax again. Aside from the part where he was worried about Stiles, worried about making it back, because another planet was quite far away, and Derek didn’t know how to use the stargate. He watched Ronon use the DHD, but the symbols didn’t mean anything to him yet. Now that he had seen them in practice, though, Derek figured the next time somebody tried to walk him through learning the constellation symbols, he would pay better attention.

Walking through the stargate felt different than flying through it, or even than being dragged through it in a metal box. He still preferred the rush of the full-body tackle from Stiles when he got to the other side of it, though. _That_ was his pack, his family, right there and waiting and accepting. He kept an eye on Daniel, to make sure there was no trouble, but Sheppard and Sandburg went right over to the other wolf to welcome him. There was no fear in their greetings. 

Derek noticed, too, that the energy guides were out. _Something_ had happened while he was gone. Blair’s wolf sat near him on the stairs, and Daniel stared right at it whenever Sheppard wasn’t trying to talk to him. The eagle sat on the balcony near the Ops deck, and a jaguar waited at the top of the stairs. The other big cat hadn’t shown up once while they were off-world, only the gangly looking, too-big coyote had dogged Ronon's every step. Now they both sat by the stargate, being harassed by a glowing fox. 

The raven dive-bombed at Daniel’s ear when Sheppard wasn’t looking, and Daniel snapped at the air as the Colonel stood up to go talk to Lorne. Derek let out a _whuf_ to keep the other wolf on track, but that was all that he’d had to do. They went back to their apartment, shifted back without trouble, only to have Sheppard and McKay show up a few minutes later and order them to Carson, to take care of the first of the off-world return protocols. 

After that was the report to the boss, and Ronon had trained Elizabeth to let him do those one-on-one, in person, which seemed a lot better than having to write everything out like the Sentinel Project reports were supposed to be handled. Derek wanted to be anywhere else, but he definitely didn’t want to have to write anything down about off-world werewolf activities, ever. 

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Elizabeth promised. "This is just a formality. Because of the nature of what we deal with out here. It's a good idea to make sure that everyone's experience… lines up. And when it doesn't, we need to know why."

"Well, the _why_ is likely because _werewolves_ ," Stiles said, but that wasn't actually the Director's point. Derek had experienced enough _weird_ in his life to have an idea, though, so when Dr. Weir declined to clarify, Derek didn't ask.

Dr. Weir also caught Derek and Daniel up to speed on what they had missed of the morning's meeting and the chat with Cowen. 

"I don't expect either of you to need to be involved with the Genii again," the Director promised. "After this most recent interaction, we'll be instituting specific protocols for the Genii. No one with the ATA will be allowed through the 'gate of a suspected Genii outpost, other than a Jumper pilot, who will remain within the ship and under shield protections at all times."

“ATA like me,” reported Stiles. Because the rule that said Stiles went where Derek went would mean that Derek wouldn’t be allowed where the Sentinel couldn’t follow him, aside from werewolf stuff, apparently.

"Why are you even still trying?" Derek asked, uneasy with the report of the peacekeeping efforts. "I've met people like them before. It's never gone well, for me or my family."

"Because, unfortunately, we may need their resources. We have before, so we can't rule it out in the future," said Dr. Weir. "They have used up their third strike, however. So whatever their plans, we have already given them something to consider in terms of dealing with Atlantis going forward."

"We took their 'gate," said Stiles, quick and quite satisfied with that bit of news. Daniel raised an eyebrow at Elizabeth.

"Really?"

"Well, we moved it," Stiles clarified. "We _take_ it when Cowen comes back like an asshole about it."

Smile held in check, Elizabeth clasped her hands in front of her and waited patiently for Stiles to get the helpfulness out of his system. He seemed to catch on and muttered an apology.

"But, I mean, you _know_ he's gonna get pissy about it. I've met him twice and figured that much out," he said. Elizabeth nodded, grinning at the observation.

"Yes, politics often makes people a little _pissy_ ," she allowed. "However. We are making our way in a new galaxy. We have a team on a bounty list that we can't afford to lose to Chief Cowen's mood swings. So we'll get his attention and see how things go. With luck, he takes us seriously and cancels the bounty before it ruins our relations with any other planets."

"And what if we're short on luck?" Derek asked. Dr. Weir gave him an assessing once over before nodding at the question.

"In that case, we take the stargate and remove the problem. We will have to ground ATA field teams, at least for a few months, and try to reach out to friendly cultures ourselves to clear up the bounty trouble the slow way," she said. "What it all means in the present tense, for the city, for you and your team most directly, is that we will have to ration food supplies now, until we are certain we still have access to our trading partners. Pre-emptive caution. No one will starve. But this round of supplies from the Daedalus will need to stretch a little further than we have been used to. Thankfully, that should be the extent of it for you two."

That was the first indication that Derek had heard in a month that he and Stiles would be somehow dealt with separately from the rest of Sheppard's team. There was little chance the Colonel wouldn't be dealing with Cowen again, after everything that had been said and done so far about all things Genii. Teyla's family had been snared into Cowen's trouble, Stiles and Derek had been literally dragged through the stargate over it… Derek wasn't an expert on AR-1, but what he knew of them so far indicated the trouble with Cowen was far from solved. As members of AR-1, then, it stood to reason that they would have more to deal with than just food rationing. 

Stiles looked over at Derek; he had caught it, too. Rather than ask for an explanation on the comment, though, Derek let it go. Maybe it was because Sheppard was still on leave. It could have been anything. They didn't know Elizabeth to know how to read her. After the last week, Derek was too exhausted to care. They could check with Sheppard later, when things were settled.

The trick was, though, that things didn't really _settle_ on Atlantis. The city was always awake, either with an AI that wouldn't let Stiles sleep without an argument, or just expedition staff always awake to stay on alert and monitor her. The newest trick from the AI was a whale call, and it woke up Stiles and Derek both later that night, but Daniel hadn't heard it. Stiles said it had kept him awake the night before, too, and that Teyla and the other Sentinel teams had heard it. Derek remembered seeing the wolf on Blair's heels and the eagle perched near Ops.

"So is it… is there another energy guide somewhere? Another Sentinel in the city, maybe?" Derek asked. Stiles stared at him from his pillow.

"It’s a _whale_. How the hell would I know?"

Derek rolled his eyes at the unhelpful answer and resolved to ask the others in the morning. When he did ask at breakfast, Sheppard went very still and very quiet, looked over at McKay with an odd look that must have been fear because it smelled like fear. He finished chewing his weirdly blue-shaded scrambled eggs and looked down the table at Blair.

"How do these energy guide-things work?" John asked. Blair shook his head.

"We don't know. We don't have a lot of reporting cases. Not enough information was available because the Project didn't want to deal with it," he replied.

"The times we've heard the whale noise? It's been when I was trying to get the city to let me sleep," Sheppard said. "So I was trying to teach it how to… how to make sense. The interface is too fast, too jumbled up, so I have to show it how to work. Then after a few minutes, the whale screeching just steps in and knocks me right off that track."

"Well, maybe, have you thought about _not_ doing that so the rest of us don't lose our hearing?" Stiles asked. Ronon smirked at him for it but Daniel wasn't as amused.

"It's not your hearing though," he pointed out. "I can't hear this thing. My hearing is pretty up there now, same as Derek's, and I can't hear it."

The conclusion was that it was happening on the same… Frequency, or whatever, as the energy guides. Blair was the only one who could easily see them, with a little focus and meditation. Derek and Daniel could see them in their wolf-shift forms, but that didn’t exactly help, given that Daniel hadn’t heard the whale song because he hadn’t been a wolf at the time. And they weren’t going to go for a swim to look for a glowing whale, either. Still, somehow, they were going to have to experiment with it to figure it out.

“It does mean that something changed, though,” Derek pointed out. “I couldn't see the guides before, until there was that trouble with the stargate. And now they’re all... watching over you directly.”

“Or that’s just the city,” John replied. Because it was a verifiable fact that the Sentinels’ stress and input levels went up a lot in the city.

“I wonder if we can get the guides to... talk to it,” Blair said. “I mean, to the whale song.”

“Derek and Daniel are the only ones who can even see them half the time,” said Stiles. “I mean, other than dreams. Or, I guess, life threatening situations -slash- zone outs-”

“Wait, _what_?” asked Blair. Sheppard nodded. 

“Stiles zoned out, back with the Genii. The fox showed up to knock him out of it, I could still see it when I got in there,” the Colonel said. “It kinda... disappeared somewhere after I got there.”

“These things can get you out of zone outs?” Rodney asked, keenly interested in that perk. Derek wasn’t sure how he felt about it, partly relieved but partly like he had been replaced by an invisible fox, and that... was admittedly _weird_. Across the table, Sheppard was shrugging, dismissing the entire suggestion.

“I don’t want bit by a bird to snap me out of it,” he complained. He held up a hand, fingers and thumb a certain distance apart. “And those birds got claws this big. They are _not_ cuddly.”

“I don’t care, if it’ll get you _breathing-_ ”

“Pain _can_ pull you out if it’s done right. And the energy guides wouldn’t _really_ cut you,” Blair said even as Rodney was arguing about it, too. Derek hid a laugh behind his hand as he aimed his fork at his plate.

“Bullshit those things can’t cut- I got a glowstick in the armory that’s energy and you need to see what it’ll do,” John replied. “Ever heard of a light saber? And you want me to let the _bird version_ get me outta a zone? That raven’s a jerk!”

The Colonel automatically started the other two Guides off on an argument about Jedi Light Sabers and energy’s documented capacity to draw blood in the Pegasus galaxy so far, the two topics apparently not being entirely unrelated. Jim Ellison stood up and left the table when Stiles joined in on the Star Wars angle, just as opinionated as Sheppard, and with none of the science background of McKay and Sandburg to argue from. The original conversation derailed entirely, with Daniel staring at them, jaw dropped, food forgotten, and Ronon _just_ short of _giggling_ at the exasperation on display. Teyla made the mistake of asking what a _Jedi_ was, which shortly thereafter had Stiles and Rodney arguing about the validity of Stilinski's Yoda impression. 

They had actually important things to do with their morning, Derek was sure of it, but he couldn’t tell it by sitting at the breakfast table in the mess hall. He didn’t mind the random outbursts of crazy so much at all. 

The _next_ morning, though, Ellison made the team start running again rather than risk a repeat performance. For some reason, now that they weren't on the Daedalus, and there weren't little kids crowding in to demand they be allowed to go surfing on another _planet_ , Stiles complained without hesitation about the six AM run. He kept it up for the _entire_ run, trying to push Ellison's patience and annoy the man. It was partly retaliation, sure, but there was an extra layer to it. The Captain had announced a weakness by walking away from a conversation about _Star Wars_ , and Stiles had to test it.

The moron played with werewolves, had survived being kidnapped by _aliens,_ and he could talk to spaceships, so apparently Ellison's glare didn't cut it anymore. Sheppard finally got tired of the added running time and casually reminded Stiles that Atlantis still had pots and pans at the mess hall. Derek started pushing Stiles' run then, trying to get him to take the hint before they got stuck on more KP. By the end of the run, though, Stiles earned them two weeks of it. Both of them. Because _teamwork_.

~*~*~

A few days later, Cowen called back. Because Stiles had spent the day shadowing Rodney and Zelenka, he was present and accounted for when the stargate got the incoming call. Derek and Daniel were off doing book-nerd stuff with Blair, so they were going to miss the call, but Shepp and Captain Ellison had been not far away, working over the city's recent security challenges with Lorne. Sheppard showed up first, with Lorne dropping off to watch the stairs.

"Genii VHF frequency," Chuck confirmed. When Dr. Weir ordered the call sent to the tv screen-thingy, Stiles rushed to where he could see. Elizabeth seemed worried by it and looked to Sheppard with a “ _Colonel-_ ” and the Colonel caught Stiles’ shoulder to pull him a little less front and center. He raised a hand to motion for quiet and Stiles nodded acceptance of the order, hoping he could actually hold to it for once. Ellison moved to stand beside the Director, so she faced the screen with the city’s two ranking military representatives as physical backup against the ornery alien Chief Cowen. 

“Director Weir. How did you move my stargate?” The Chief wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries, which tracked with what Stiles had seen of the man so far. He hadn’t been very _pleasant_ when Stiles had met him in person, either. 

“It happens to be something we have the capacity to do,” said Elizabeth. “It is why I would encourage you to reassess your recent dismissal of Atlantis as an ally, Chief. We are capable of assisting each other in many ways, it would be a shame to lose that relationship.”

Stiles stood not far away from the Director and he easily heard the lie as it fell from her mouth. It made it hard not to laugh at the flustered annoyance on the face of the old man on the screen. He was an arrogant ass and scrambling for power, no different than Gerard Argent, but at least the Argents were a threat. The Genii could be disabled by moving a stargate, or sending two werewolves in to cause trouble, _and_ they were just annoying in Stiles’ experience. (Though, admittedly, that perception might have been largely due to the fact that he was drugged half the time he was stuck with them, so Stiles kept that theory mostly to himself.) 

“Fine,” said Cowen, like the pompous twit that he was. “Then put the stargate back where it belongs. We’ll talk about repairing this alliance at that point.”

“ _Excuse_ me?” asked Dr. Weir, crossing her arms. 

“Yeah, that’s not how this works,” added Sheppard. “If you want to show you’re interested in repairing anything, you can get to work recalling that bounty you’ve got out on me and my men.”

Elizabeth nodded her agreement. “Once we have confirmation that our teams are safe to continue our visits with other allied planets, perhaps then we’ll consider moving the stargate back to its former location, but not until we have proof of your commitment.”

“One you won’t break this time, huh?” said Ellison. “Maybe think about it a little more seriously. Because if it doesn’t happen, the next time we move that stargate, you won’t be getting it back at all.”

The threat seemed to hold a little more weight than maybe it might have before Chief Cowen had spent a few days trekking out entire miles to find his stargate. Stiles could hear the man’s heart rate spike even over the shoddy video connection. 

"Fine. I'll… see what I can do," said Cowen.

"That's a _great_ idea," replied Sheppard, sarcasm evident to any moron.

"And in the interests of this being a more successful arrangement, for all of us, we'll set a fair deadline for the bounty recall. Let's say two months," said Elizabeth. "It shouldn't take that long for you to handle, as resourceful as you are, but just to be sure there's no hiccups. We want this handled completely, Chief Cowen. And then the agreement between Atlantis and the Genii can start over, from more equal footing?"

"Yes. We shall see," replied Cowen.

"Still holding out for the Daturans?" Sheppard asked, arms crossed. Stiles looked from the screen to the Colonel, uneasy with discussing the Daturans with Cowen. The doublecross from Gerard Argent was something no one would have expected from a Hunter, too, but he had sold Scott on it, nearly killed Derek in the process. Staring at the screen, Stiles didn’t like what he saw. Cowen seemed mad enough about the threat to the stargate; offering him an ally with the Wraith just then would have him turning into an Argent.

"That's none of your concern," said Cowen.

"Actually, it is," said Elizabeth. "And we would encourage you to reconsider."

"The Daturans work for the Wraith," Stiles blurted out.

If Stiles could hear the spike in the heart rate of the jerk on the other end of the grainy video feed, he could hear and _smell_ the panic that he had caused on his own side of the connection, like some kind of stereo-smell-o-gram. Sheppard lifted a hand to catch his shoulder in a subtle hint but Stiles was determined not to take it. 

"Look, I'm just saying, you're an idiot for trusting anyone associated with the Wraith. I'm new here, and even I know that," Stiles charged ahead, despite the fact that he could tell he was stressing out Dr. Weir. "And you've got their technology sitting there in your barn. You almost handed me over to them. I got opinions on that, and all of 'em say that if you're still trying to fix things with guys who are just gonna feed your guys to the Wraith, you're a moron. Like, that's putting it mildly. I got a whole alphabet of words you wouldn't like about what that makes you, but that's the idiot's version."

There was a strangled choke from Sheppard but he kept it near silent and didn't interrupt Stiles' rant. Cowen crossed his arms, uncomfortable, hiding it with annoyance.

"And I'm to believe a child-"

"I heard from your own mouth that you were going to put this same child behind the controls of a flying Ancients' craft," Sheppard cut in quickly. "So I think if you're going to trust a piece of technology like that to the kid, you can trust a piece of free intel. Obviously the kid knows more than you do."

"You would have me believe the Daturans are Wraith worshippers?" Cowen challenged. 

"As I said, Chief, there's a few things you don't know about your friends there," was all Sheppard said in reply. He shrugged. "But if you're not interested in listening to us on this, that's a mistake you're going to have to make on your own."

"Believe it or not, we are trying to help your people, Chief Cowen. The Daturans technology is certainly an enticement to working with them, I understand that, really," added Elizabeth. She shook her head "But it was a product of their relationship with the Wraith. Which makes them a threat to you and anyone below their capability."

Cowen was not pleased with the entire call, really, and there was some aggravated discussion between the Genii leader and Dr. Weir, with Sheppard and Ellison randomly backing her up. They played Bad Cop so she could play Good Cop in the overall negotiation that was required to get the man to go away without being a pain in the ass about everything. Rodney caught Stiles' attention with a quiet word over the radio and he coaxed Stiles away from the Director and the other Sentinel. 

"Seriously? What part of _new kid on the galaxy block_ says _argue with the bomb-loving dictator_?" Rodney whispered at him when he got back to the station with him and Zelenka. Stiles waved a hand at the screen.

"The part where he tried to kill me cuz he's stupid?" Stiles returned. Rodney hemmed on that but allowed it.

"Rule number one hundred and four: We leave this part to Elizabeth," was all he said. Stiles just rolled his eyes and stayed quiet, listening until they finally got Cowen talked around to being a somewhat decent human in regards to their treaty and the _not-conspiring-with-Wraith_ part. When Sheppard walked over after the stargate was closed, he had that whipped look on his face that Jackson used to get whenever he lost an argument with Lydia. Stiles rolled his eyes. 

"Rodney already told me," he said, because it didn't take a genius to figure out what the Colonel had been sent to lecture him about. 

"Oh. Good," said Sheppard.

Stiles still got handed down another week of pots-and-pans in the kitchen for it, though. The funny thing was, however, that an hour later, Sheppard took a week off of the original two weeks from when Stiles was messing around when they went running. Stiles and Derek were left at a sum total of two weeks extra chores as disciplinary detail. The Colonels still escorted Stiles to the kitchen personally, however, right from the gateroom. Just to make sure he didn’t get lost. When he looked at the Colonel a little funny for the very contradictory educational value of the disappearing KP-time, Sheppard shrugged it off.

"I'm the one who told you to go with your gut, and you did. You can slide on this one under the loophole.” 

“But from here on out, leave the city-business to Elizabeth or it will not go well for any of us," Rodney added. 

Derek showed up twenty minutes later, already informed of why his day had been rescheduled to accommodate the Guide-duties in the kitchen. Rather than help with the dishes, he sat down in a chair he stole from the cafeteria and read off a tablet, well away from the splash-zone.

“Hey! You’re supposed to help,” Stiles called over to him. Derek arched an eyebrow.

“I am helping,” he replied. “If you zone out, I’ll make sure you don’t drown. You can handle the rest. Just use the Force.”

Stiles rolled his eyes and slogged through the shift on his own. Derek would randomly read off something Lantean, because he was apparently working on his language skills, thereby being useful for something other than kitchen duty. Stiles reluctantly reconsidered the entertainment value of sassing off to the military guys as a form of protest when held up in comparison to actually getting to _do_ something for the city. Maybe he wasn’t the greatest at learning a dead language, but he could have been in Ops shadowing Rodney and Radek on the tech stuff if he had maybe coordinated things a little better. What was he supposed to do though, just let the adults hand over a _bad idea_ to the _bad guy_? Wasn’t happening. So Stiles put in his two hours work for it. 

By the time they were back to the gateroom, McKay was in the middle of something that apparently required an argument with Zelenka, so Sheppard and Ellison redirected them to the armory. They each grabbed a few gear boxes and hiked out to a building far away from the central control tower. One level of it had been cleared out and turned into a shooting range. Ronon and Teyla met them there. The weapons set out for use were not all from Earth and Stiles didn’t honestly believe that they were real. He started to pick up something that looked like a silver pole, maybe a fighting staff with a bulb on the end, but Sheppard slid it away from him.

“Nope,” the Colonel said. “We don’t know enough about this guy yet. The only ones who are cleared to play with this one are me and Ronon.”

“What is it?” Stiles asked. 

“Daturan glowstick,” the Colonel replied. 

“Mean bastard. Uses electricity better than this one does,” Ronon added, holding up his own weapon. Stiles could hear the worn-looking gun buzzing even though it wasn’t primed to fire. “Can shift from low levels, just to get your attention, hurts like a bitch when it hits metal though. Then higher levels just cut clean. No different than throwing a knife, but doesn’t leave a mark, just a wound.”

They set up a demonstration for it, singed a paper target at the end of the row with a light hit. The next shot was aimed instead at a faraday cage on the other end of the room. The single pulse left bolts of electricity crawling over the metal for nearly a minute, crisscrossing and dancing in ways that Stiles swore couldn't be natural.

"Long story short, these guys hurt. Don't touch," said Sheppard as he set the Daturan weapon aside. The next one up for Show and Tell was the Zat gun, which Stiles had seen a couple of times on the Daedalus since running into them on Earth, but until that afternoon not seen in action. Watching the range dummy disintegrate into less than ash, he suddenly had a much better understanding of why Sheppard had folded like a deck of cards when the Zat gun was brought into play back at Blair's apartment.

The next weapon was another weird looking rifle that looked like it was made out of plastic, but the second Stiles touched it, he realized it was a lightweight metal, solid and cold. The Wraith stunner had a strange, bulky shape, like a swordfish with two pointy blades on the nose instead of one.

"This one… you guys are gonna get figured out," Sheppard said. He very carefully got out of the way before handing the gun to Ellison. "Best way to get rid of Wraith, short of a grenade or a rocket launcher. So we'll do some work with these. And then you'll start getting some bayonet training when Teyla thinks you can handle it."

Ellison tried to get comfortable with the awkward weapon but wasn't having the best luck. Ronon stepped in and showed him how it worked, firing again at the faraday cage. It shot off another electric bolt that danced along the wire, but it didn't seem to have the same amount of power as the glowstick had. Somehow, Stiles was still certain the thing would knock him on his ass the second he tried it. They spent the rest of the afternoon working up to finding out that he hadn't been that far off with the guess; Stiles went to bed that night with a bruise across his ribs from the first time he tried to fire it. He was not going to be in a hurry to play with the Pegasus guns.

Atlantis let Stiles sleep that night, no weird whale songs to contend with, so he was able to show up for Ellison's too-early running class and didn't grumble about it. Having discovered the carafe in the kitchen the day before, he was determined to reward himself with coffee for it later. Rodney had complained plenty about how quickly the coffee rations disappeared on Atlantis, so Stiles was getting first dibs.

He left his plate of food on the breakfast table to go back to the kitchen, off in another large room adjacent to the one used for the cafeteria buffet line and tables. The cafeteria wasn't wired for power, so the coffee pot was kept in the kitchen and monitored by the cooks to keep people from walking off with it. It was empty when Stiles got to it though. He checked with the on-duty cook and was pointed toward a room at the back of the kitchen space and told to get it going; apparently Stiles was already known to belong to the kitchen staff, which he figured could pay off in spades and wasn't about to complain.

Unlike the big, open area of the kitchen, there were an overwhelming variety of food smells around him in the makeshift pantry room. Everything smelled like coffee and fruit and vinegar and spices, and Stiles' eyes were watering. Finding a container that looked like coffee on one of the racks, Stiles started wrenching at the lid, trying to get the top off so he could make sure he had picked the right airtight metal tub. 

His blurry senses weren't playing tricks on him though when he looked up from the metal canister to see the wall behind the rack had opened as Stiles fought with the lid. _Oh crap._ That was probably not supposed to be that way. Stiles carefully set the can back on the big pantry rack and wheeled the metal shelves out of the way of the door. He poked his head into the dark room beyond it and the lights on the walls lit up. The room was mostly empty, which Stiles already knew to be a lie in Atlantis, because he had personally pulled tables and control panels out of the floors and walls. It probably _wasn't_ empty. Stuff likely was just _hiding_.

In the middle of the room, however, was a large pillar, triangular and taller than Ronon by a couple of feet, easily. It didn't look like anything fancy. But it didn't look like something that belonged in a pantry, either. And since Stiles had lit the room up after accidentally opening the door, he was cautiously afraid to just leave the room unknown to go get backup. So he mentally hit the switch on the radio to his team.

"Uh... hey... Colonel? I think I found something…"

There was a long pause before Sheppard got back to him. "In the kitchen?"

"Kinda," Stiles replied.

"I thought you went in to check the coffee," Rodney said.

"Well, I did. It was out," Stiles replied. "And a door opened up on me when I was trying to get the refill going."

" _Don't_ touch anything!" Sheppard said quickly. Stiles easily heard the echo from Rodney, as well as three chairs scraping loudly across the cafeteria floor a few rooms away as half his team abandoned their breakfast.

"I won't!" Stiles said quickly. "I just figured you guys should see this..."

A moment later, Sheppard stood in the doorway with him, scanning the walls and floor and the pointed tower in the center of the room. Rodney and his tablet ducked between them to get a look at everything before they lit anything else up. Sheppard let out an annoyed grumble.

"Right in the middle of breakfast," he complained. "Can't let you go anywhere."

Stiles shrugged at him. "Does that mean I'm off pots and pans?"

The Colonel scoffed. "Nope. Nice try, though."

~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *~The End~*


End file.
